


Good Intentions

by rallamajoop



Category: Cable and Deadpool, X-Force (1990s)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, M/M, Mildly Dubious Consent, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-03-20
Updated: 2013-05-09
Packaged: 2017-12-05 04:32:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 45,570
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/718926
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rallamajoop/pseuds/rallamajoop
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Deadpool thought killing this 'Nathan' guy was going to be a fairly routine job. He couldn't have been more wrong.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> **Very Important Intro Notes** This fic is an AU, splitting from canon around _New Mutants_ #98, a.k.a. Deadpool's very first appearance in Marvel canon - also being the first time he and Cable met. I am not sure whether, in good conscience, I can recommend people actually _read_ that chapter if they haven't already, since we're talking Liefeld art in all its teeth-grinding glory. All you really need to know is that Cable's still in his early days leading very first incarnation of the New Mutants/X-Force team, and Deadpool's working for a guy who wants Cable dead - however, when Deadpool arrives to do the deed, he gets only as far as threatening Cable and having a brief fight with the X-kids before being shot by 'Domino' and tied up. Beyond that, I am going to be playing rather loosely with a lot of elements of the timeline – partially because it’s an AU, but also because the canonical timeline already contradicts _itself_ in ways I cannot easily otherwise resolve.
> 
> So, yeah – C&DP fic set _before_ C &DP started (and doubtless well before anyone at Marvel would have dreamed of giving either character a solo series, let alone an oddball team-up). Inspiration seems to work like that for me.

 

  
 _Well_ ** _sheez_** _, it's not like we're lovers or nothin'! The guy just cuts the pay-checks and I cut the throats._  
\- Deadpool discussing his then-employer – _actual quote_ from his _second_ ever appearance in X-Force Volume 1 #2

* * *

  
Most of Cable's remaining doubts evaporated around the same time their captive finished sharing his enthusiastic ideas about being sent to a nice prison in the Bahamas. Loudmouthed indeed – whatever else could be said for this 'Deadpool' (which even on short association was more than enough), he didn't lack for balls. Still, there was no harm in being thorough. A few external insights into just what manner of intruder they'd caught didn't make the question of what they were going to do with him any less pressing, and any extra time he could buy while he made up his mind was worth making the most of.

"I think we should find out exactly who we're dealing with," he said aloud, unfolding his arms and moving towards their prisoner. Deadpool eyed every step with the jittery attention of a caged beast.

"Oooh, you want to see me without my mask on? I'm warning ya, you won't like me without my mask on. I don't think I'm the kind of girl who goes that far on a first date, Nathan-baby."

Cable had a hand on the mask before the final word was out of his mouth, and pulled it off in one quick tug.

There were shocked gasps and murmurs from behind him. Cable pursed his lips.

Well, this was... expected, technically. Hardly less confronting for it. To his own mind at least, more warranting the judgement of 'poor sod' than 'monstrous, inhuman freak', though he'd be naïve to imagine that to be the usual reaction.

" _Warned ya_ ," Deadpool snarled, vicious despite the self-conscious bow of his head under the glare of so many eyes, trying to hide his face in shadows that weren't there to hide in. In the end, that proved to be all Cable had still needed to make up his mind.

"Leave us. I'll deal with him," he told the others.

"Cable, he's..." Sam started to say. Either adjectives failed him, or good sense stopped him before he got any further.

"I had noticed," said Cable. "Meanwhile, in the twenty odd seconds the rest of you lasted against him, I hope you _all_ noticed how much more training you all need before our _next_ armed guest arrives. Now might be a good time to start."

The room cleared quickly after that.

Deadpool looked around warily, like he half-expected a hooded man with a box of medieval torture instruments to walk out of a bookshelf, but finding that it really was just him and Cable, his attention came back to his captor, full force.

"Alright, _Nate_ , since it's just you and me, let's clear up a thing or two. What do you bet is the _one thing_ a guy with my looks hates more than being reminded he's a freak?"

"What?" said Cable, playing along.

"Try _pity_ ," Deadpool spat. "So if clearing out the brats _wasn't_ your way of saving their innocent eyes the shame of me getting 'forcefully interrogated' the way real mercs handle it, I am going to be _seriously_ unhappy."

"Who says I pity you?" said Cable. "Or that I imagine 'forceful interrogation' is going to work on a man who keeps talking with a supposedly broken jaw?"

"Oh, suuuuure, I bet you sent the kids away because you're so taken by my good looks and charm that you wanna have your way with me right here, right now – huh, big boy?"

'Loudmouthed' did not do him justice. Well, why do things halfway?

Cable took another step to put himself firmly inside Deadpool's personal space, and crouched – slowly – down until he was just about on the other man's eye level.

"And what if I do?" he said, taking hold of his captive's chin. Then he kissed Deadpool on the lips, brief but purposeful.

When he leaned back, Deadpool had taken on a haunted look. "Uh, sorry, think I may have been hallucinating for a sec there; what'd I miss?"

Cable smirked. He didn't let go of Deadpool's jaw. "Hallucinating or fantasising?"

"Who can tell? They're both so... that was _real?_ "

In lieu of answering, Cable pressed another kiss to the side of his jaw, the texture of the skin there unusual, but not displeasing. If the bone really had been broken earlier, it showed no sign.

"Aha, right, very funny," Deadpool grumbled. "No really. _Hilarious_. I'm just splitting at the seams. My _inside_ seams where no-one can see them. _Joke's over_."

"Who says I'm joking?" Cable kept his movements slow. The pulse in Deadpool's neck was racing now.

"Uh, I think there's been some kinda mix-up," Deadpool tried, voice suddenly faster than even its usual rattle. "I was 'sposed to be appearing in a _comic_ today – y'know – manly, G-rated, painfully heteronormative? _Not_ a porno. Definitely not _this_ porno. Wrong room. All my agent's fault. I'll just see myself out..."

"Nice try."

"Are you _sure_ you wouldn't rather beat me to a pulp?"

"Would you enjoy that?"

"No, but it sounds a lot better when you get back and your boss wants to know how it went!" Deadpool insisted frantically. "You remember that thing where I tried to kill you five minutes ago?"

Easy does it, Cable decided – he'd get nowhere by making Deadpool panic. Giving his jaw one last nibble, he moved back. Instead, he brought both hands to trace the muscle of Deadpool's chest – less threatening, but hardly ambiguous as a statement of intent. "Clearly. I also remember how you got in undetected, and took three of my men down before they could stop you."

"And that _turns you on?!_ Don't you heroic types have rules about molesting your prisoners?"

"That only applies when the prisoners don't want to be molested."

"Did you stop and think maybe I _don't?_ I'm already crazy! Nofair, messing with my head!"

"I'm quite sincere about this." Although the fabric hid the worst from view, he could feel the same textured skin from Deadpool's face extended over the rest of his body, moving with the rapid rise and fall of Deadpool's chest under his fingers. "And you've been thinking about it," he added, "ever since you first laid eyes on me."

"Bet you use that line on _all_ your prisoners," Deadpool muttered, indignant.

Cable let himself smile. "You thought I hadn't noticed?"

"There was nothing to...!"

A finger over Deadpool's lips was surprisingly effective in shutting him off. "You weren't in much of a rush to finish me off," Cable reminded him. "You made _quite_ the point of letting me know it wasn't personal."

"Can't blame a guy for being disappointed you put up such a lousy fight – Tolliver had me thinking you were going to be an actual _challenge_. Just 'cause I'm a morally challenged psychopath doesn't meant I don't have professional standards to think of!"

Cable let his hands travel around to Deadpool's back, leaning in until his lips didn't quite brush the lobe of his ear. "Then it wasn't because you were thinking," Cable let his voice drop to just about a whisper, "'a shame to have to waste such a nice piece of ass'?"

"N-no!"

"You're not," his hands trailed lower, the inviting curve of Deadpool's own (also very nice) ass so very close now, "as subtle as you think."

"I'm carrying enough weapons to be the next three Arnie movies all on my own! Where does 'subtle' enter into it?" Deadpool twisted under his hands. "The boss never mentioned _this_ in the mission statement!"

And that was Cable's cue to back off before Deadpool really started to panic. Bringing his hands back to safer territory, he sat back on his heels. "Let's talk about your boss," he said. "How much is he paying you?"

Deadpool calmed down a bit – interrogation seemed to be an area he felt more comfortable with. "Is this one of those 'how much is my life worth' kind of questions? Sorry to bust your ego Nate, but it's more of a fixed salary kind of job."

"Maybe I want to make you a better offer."

"You want to hire me in exchange for _sex?_ "

"A _number_ , Deadpool."

"Hah, then for your information, Tolliver's paying me _two thousand_ buckos a week. Best paying gig I've had since-"

"You're lying."

"Am not."

"I have a better idea of what a mercenary of your calibre is worth to Tolliver than you give me credit for."

"What are you, his _Dad?_ "

"I'm the man who's about to offer you fifteen hundred a week to work for me."

Deadpool froze. "Fifteen hundred? For _serious?_ " The words escaped with a bit too much enthusiasm. Most of it faded again when he saw Cable smirking. "...you _bastard._ "

"Plus expenses," Cable continued rotating his hands gently against Deadpool's sides. "Plus room and board. _And_... there are certain other _perks_ I can offer you."

Deadpool's eyes widened even further. "You _are_ trying to hire me for sex!"

"I'm trying to hire you for _money_. You can consider _this_ ," Cable spread a hand meaningfully over his chest, " _incentive_ – to make you think twice when a real offer of two thousand comes your way."

Deadpool squirmed a bit. "Uh, sure. It's been real, Nathan, but unfortunately for you, I really don't swing this way..."

Cable raised an eyebrow at him. Then he looked pointedly downwards. Deadpool followed his gaze to where part of his spandex costume was stretching rather further than it had been designed to.

"Whaaaat, that? That don't mean nothing! Deadpool Junior and me have some great times, but Nate, you're in for a world of heartbreak if you think it means anything just because he waves hello. Unless you think I also swing for public transport or a good taco or the _Golden Girls_ or..."

"Older women turn you on too?"

"Oh, fuck you."

"We'll get there," said Cable, enjoying the way Deadpool's breath hitched when his hands dipped lower.

"I'm still catching up on how we got _here!_ Did someone forgot to send the artist one of the pages in today's script? _Why is no-one noticing but me?_ "

"How much more clear do I need to make my intentions here?"

"Pretty clear how much of them are about putting one over the guy who just tried to kill you," Deadpool snapped.

"Less than you might think."

Deadpool made a noise of exasperation. "Okay, so maybe Big Deadpool and Little Deadpool don't always agree on the fine print, but let me tell you, if I was untied right now, this would be going _very_ different."

Cable raised an eyebrow and, unseen by Deadpool, fished a small knife out of a pocket.

The look on Deadpool's face when he realised the rope holding his hands had been cut was priceless.

"Your choice," Cable told him.

Deadpool spent five seconds staring at his hands in furious indecision. Then he threw both arms around Cable's body and fixed his mouth viciously on Cable's neck.

"Didn't your... mother ever tell you..." he managed, between sucking kisses into Cable's skin, "it's _rude_ to call a guy's bluff _twice_ in one argument?"

Cable was not about to let the sweet sense of victory – or the decidedly _interesting_ things Deadpool was doing to his neck – put him off his stride. "My mother was a clone created by a mad scientist, some number of centuries before the era in which I actually grew up." He shrugged at the stunned look Deadpool gave him. "I never really knew her."

"...you aren't gonna let me win _anything_ , are ya?"

"You aren't making that very hard."

"Making plenty of things _hard_ around here on your own," Deadpool grumbled, trying to climb into Cable's lap. Cable shifted to oblige him, and Deadpool scrambled in close, legs arriving either side of his waist so that two of those aforementioned hard things could press up against each other, grinding them together in angry thrusts.

Cable let him, the last remaining doubts over an unorthodox plan falling swiftly to rest. Even with the contact dulled by several layers of fabric, Deadpool knew what he was doing.

"Just want you to know I do know what you're thinking, smartass," Deadpool muttered, keeping control of his voice with increasing effort. "Guy like me, face like reconstituted roadkill. Hookers probably charge double just to take his pants off. He's gotta be just about _begging_ for it. And," he added, panting as Cable's lips traced the underside of his chin, "let's face it – you're basically right."

"Hm." The patterns of heat Deadpool's hands were mapping across his back were far more interesting to Cable than anything he had to say just now.

"Just so you know," Deadpool went on, "I could kill you, like, four different ways right now."

"Only four?"

" _Like_ four. Gimme a sec, I'll think of another one."

 _I'm sure you could_ , Cable mused. The wiry strength in every muscle of Deadpool's body was only all the more evident when you could feel it shifting against you with every move he made. "But you aren't going to?"

"Well. Not the kinda guy to look a gift fuck in the groin. I can kill you later."

"Or you could take me up on my offer."

"Could do. Maybe. Maybe you could do a few more things to see if you can convince me." If there had been any possible doubt about what kind of things he had in mind, a downward wiggle of his hips settled the matter.

Cable smirked into his next kiss. "Now you're getting the idea. What do you say we move this somewhere more comfortable than the library floor?"

"There's a table?" said Deadpool hopefully.

"I have a room down the corridor."

Deadpool leaned back to look at him. "Sure you wanna trust me to get that far without changing my mind about whether this was a really dumb idea after all?" The angry edge to Deadpool's voice had yet to fade even a little.

He had a point – even a short walk down a corridor was enough to rid the situation of a good deal of its spur-of-the-moment deniability. Cable shifted backwards and palmed Deadpool through his pants. "I'll take my chances."

"...that is _so_ cheating," Deadpool panted.

"Trust me," Cable told him. "I'll make it worth your while."

" _Worst_ euphemism for 'bend you over the nearest surface and hope the kids won't walk in' I ever heard," Deadpool grumbled, failing not to sound just a little bit hopeful about the prospect.

"I thought you wanted be the one bending _me_ over?" said Cable, innocently.

Deadpool make what could only be fairly described as 'a noise'.

"I... _what?_ You mean... but that was just... you were _serious?_ "

"I could be. If you want me to be."

Deadpool appeared to experience some momentary trouble remembering how to close his jaw.

"...where did you say your room was?" he managed.

Cable grinned and got to his feet, pulling Deadpool with him.

* * *

'Just down the corridor' was a slight exaggeration, especially counting a stop at a bathroom cupboard to find a container of hand lotion, but Deadpool (somewhat uncharacteristically) didn't comment. Possibly he was still having trouble with his jaw. Or was having too much trouble getting his eyes off Cable's behind to notice how far they'd gone.

Cable let him close the door behind them, and stripped out of his shirt without turning around.

"You have a lot of guts turning your back on a guy who tried to kill you once already today," Deadpool observed. He sounded a little bit distracted, and a little bit in awe.

"I could say the same about a man who broke into a building full of powerful mutants."

Deadpool shrugged. "Hey, my bits grow back. Pretty sure yours _don't_."

Cable filed that under 'things to talk about later', and dropped his hands to his pants.

Under Deadpool's scrutiny, he may have spent a little more time and effort on the task of removing them than strictly necessary.

"Getting undressed?" he prompted. "Or did you want me to do that for you?"

"Do you _want_ me undressed?" said Deadpool, pointing to his face. "It doesn't get better further down."

"What you're wearing looks like a one-piece job, is this going to get any further otherwise?" said Cable, meeting his eye. "Show me."

Muttering obscenities at his costume, Deadpool pulled off his gloves, then grabbed the top of his costume and yanked it down to his hips. He glared up at Cable, daring him to comment.

"Well?" he snapped.

It was a moment late for Cable to realise that making Deadpool put himself on display like this may have been a mistake. The shame Deadpool felt about his appearance ran deep – far too deep to be a wound he could risk opening lightly. And he could only imagine how any hollow sentiments to the effect that it didn't look as bad as any fool could have seen it did would be received. Probably the only option he had left was not to notice it at all.

Cable stepped forward, making no attempt to school his expression beyond open-minded curiosity, and trailed a hand slowly down Deadpool's chest, exploring the texture he'd felt through his clothing. "Well now we're getting somewhere?" he offered, mildly.

The tension in Deadpool's shoulders relaxed only very slightly. "Y'know, this makes a lot more sense if you've got some kind of fetish for _freaks_."

Cable raised an eyebrow. "A few minutes ago I was taking advantage of your desperation. Now I'm after you for fetish fuel?"

"No-one said it can't be both!"

Cable rolled his eyes, then cupped Deadpool's chin with a hand.

"I'm not going to tell you it's your most attractive feature, but if you hadn't noticed, half my torso is made of metal. You'd be amazed how many people don't find that a turn-on either."

"...huhh." The way Deadpool eyed his left arm, almost like he hadn't even noticed it until now, suggested he wasn't going to be one of them.

"Besides," Cable added, smirking as his wandering hands pulled Deadpool closer, "I'm counting on you to more than make up for it in _other_ departments."

"Oh sure, just heap the pressure on a guy," Deadpool muttered, but now the indignation from a minute ago had all but been replaced with breathless wonder.

"You're doing fine so far," Cable told him, "Now, do I get a first name, or am I going to be calling you 'Deadpool' while you take me?"

There was a sharp intake of breath in response, quieter than last time but still much louder than breathing generally required. "Wade. Name's Wade." Cable had the passing impression he was lucky Deadpool had remembered this. "You really were serious about the part where I get to fuck you..."

In answer, Cable sat back on the bed, spreading himself backwards, thoroughly aware of Deadpool's – _Wade's_ – eyes on him the whole time. He reached for the hand lotion.

"You'll have to give me a minute," he explained, starting to prepare himself with two fingers. "Despite all your insinuations, I haven't done this in a while."

Cable must have blinked then, because he completely missed Deadpool getting rid of his pants. The next thing that mattered was Wade climbing onto the bed, twitching through every movement as though he drawn by unseen forces – or perhaps more aptly, as though he was half-afraid Cable might stop fucking himself with his fingers if startled. He seemed locked in indecision over what he wanted to touch first, or whether he was allowed to touch at all.

Cable could only imagine how he must look right now; the expression on Wade's face was almost as good as a mirror.

"Or did you want to take care of this part?" he asked innocently, holding out the lube.

Wade snatched it from him, muttering something unintelligible, and quickly had it spread over both shaking hands and some of the bed sheets as well. With one hand he took hold of his cock with a groan, smearing it liberally with fluid. Cable was given barely time to get his own hand out of the way before Wade’s own slick fingers were pushing into him, his thumb flittering over the curve of his ass like it didn’t know what to touch first. He let out a satisfied hum – Wade was at a much better angle for this, and taking to what could be seen as a mere unfortunate necessity with real enthusiasm. How interesting.

But not worth dragging out.

"I'm ready when you are," he told Wade – a name that fit so much more easily on the insecure but reassuringly _human_ creature who'd emerged from Deadpool's costume – who responded by drawing out his fingers, rendered silent for the first time in the whole process. His hands settled on Cable's thighs as he lined himself up, massaging the muscle nervously.

They both hissed at the first contact, the full girth of Wade’s cock solid and immediate in a way he’d not experienced in long enough that it took a moment for his body to remember how to make this work. Wade's hiss turned into a whine as he slowly slid further in, inch by inch, but when most of a minute had gone without any further movement beyond a lot of panting and a little shaking, things had gone well past good manners. No-one would have imagined _Cable_ needed this long to adjust.

"Been a while for you too?" he asked, amused.

"S- _shut up!_ " Wade snapped, thrusting the rest of the way in one quick movement, then pausing to groan. "If we're counting," he added, voice strained, "since the last time a hot mutant hero wannabe with a fantastic ass tied me up and seduced me into fucking him through his own bed, then _yes, it has been a while!_ "

He punctuated the middle of the statement with another angry, sudden thrust, which nonetheless hit a receptive spot inside Cable at such a pleasing angle that it took some time to assemble the whole sentence coherently. It hadn't been his intention to go on aggravating Wade at this late stage, teasingly or otherwise – but if _that_ was any indication, it might not be such a bad idea.

Cable shifted a little on the bed, finding a position to give Wade the best access as he began to thrust raggedly.

"Any minute now," Wade muttered, disbelieving, words emerging even more unevenly than his movements, "I'm gonna wake up and find out this is all a crazy wet dream and the boss is gonna want to know what all those stains on the mug-shot of you are meant to be..."

"A photo of me?" That made sense; Deadpool had had no trouble identifying him.

"Didn't... didn't do you justice... Did I say that out loud?"

"Didn't hear a thing," Cable growled, rapidly losing all interest in teasing him. " _More_."

It was the first suggestion that night Wade took to without the slightest hint of contrariness.

"Damn, this – _place_ ," he stammered out a minute later, "full of all those _kids_ – you even bother to _think_ what you're gonna tell _them_ 'bout what you did with the big scary merc you caught sneaking down the chimney...?"

"I'll tell them I packaged you up and sent you home. By _mail_." Cable didn't even know where this was coming from anymore – just the weird superstition that if he didn't keep Wade talking he'd stop moving too.

Wade snickered. "Oh you _bastard_. Gonna get your fifteen hundred a week out of me without letting me leave your room, that the plan?"

It _didn't_ sound like a bad plan, which said a lot – maybe a bit too much – about the state Wade had brought him to. Much more of this and he'd be making _Wade_ sound coherent. Wade himself, meanwhile, was giving the distinct impression he could do this all night. Or come to pieces five seconds from now, and Cable didn't know which of those prospects he liked more.

"Did I mention," Wade began again, "really not how I was expecting to spend the evening."

"Glad you didn't get to kill me?" Getting a hand on his own cock – trying to jerk it in time with Wade's erratic rhythm – was almost too much on its own.

"Might be... might be seeing an upside or two. Oh, _fuck_..." From the sudden burst of uneven speed Wade put on, the way his eyes were fixed on Cable's hand, the sight of what Cable was doing to himself was doing nearly as much again for Wade as well.

Cable caught the side of his face in a hand and nudged Wade to look up at him. "Believe it," he pronounced. "This is real."

The pronouncement alone wasn't what sent Wade over the edge, but it did mark his last attempt to say anything coherent of more than one syllable for the rest of the way. There were snatches of swearwords, variants on Cable's name, breaking off into deep-throated moans. All his attention was going into pounding himself into Cable as hard as he could.

For himself, Cable no longer found any inclination to do more than lean back and let Wade have him, the promise of release to come coiling tight inside him. It was almost a miracle he outlasted Wade at all in the end – and then by hardly long enough to properly enjoy the sight of Wade – this fascinatingly twisted man – coming so completely apart while still buried deep inside him.

They both spent a while catching their breath afterwards before anyone moved.

Wade pulled himself out at last in one short tug that made them both wince, sat there panting some more for a few brief seconds, and then fell face-first down onto Cable's chest. The weight of his body was heavy but warm and comfortable; finding the willpower to mop the worst of the semen off his chest (excluding what Wade was lying in) and find something to cover them both with so they didn't wake up freezing later took almost all the energy he could muster.

"So we'll discuss the details of your contract with me later then?" Cable whispered to him.

Wade made an unclear noise that was probably some kind of threat, and appeared to go to sleep.

Cable lay awake a little longer, trying and largely failing to decide when he'd last enjoyed sex so much as this. (Certainly not as simple an answer as 'when he'd last been with another man', and certainly, the danger of the whole proposition had been _some_ of the appeal...)

If this was to set the tone for their relationship, he mused on the very edge of sleep, it promised to be _very_ satisfying indeed.

* * *

Cable managed to disentangle himself from his still-sleeping bedmate without incident when he woke the next morning, fished up the previous day's pants from beside the bed and made his way to the kitchen. Deserted at this hour, for several minutes there was no sound but the kettle boiling stubbornly. Cable let his mind wander, content to allow himself a slow morning.

The noise didn't quite mask the sound of quiet footsteps making their way up behind him, and did nothing to soften the sound of a gun being cocked at his head.

There was another click a second later, but it was just the kettle – finally freed the proverbial effects of scrutiny – choosing that moment to boil.

Cable straightened, but made no move to turn around. "Morning, Wade. Coffee?"

"Yeah, _no_." Wade did not sound pleased. "How 'bout instead we have a little talk about what the _fuck_ that was supposed to be last night?"

Cable turned around, slowly, using the excuse of acting casual to avoid any sudden movements. "You didn't seem to mind at the time."

"At the time the blood wasn't exactly rushing to my brain, if you get what I'm saying here." Wade was fully dressed in his costume – even the mask, which he must have had to go back to the library to retrieve. Given that he'd also found where his weapons had been stored, that probably hadn't required much of a detour.

"I thought I made myself clear? I want you," Cable leaned back against the counter, "to work for me. And I'm willing to make it worth your while."

"Yeah, got that," Deadpool sneered. "What I don't get is how you get from that to where you're making it with a _total stranger_ who just tried to _shoot you in the head_."

Cable smirked, and gave Deadpool a heated look. "It worked out. Didn't it?"

" _You didn't know it would_ ," Deadpool snapped, "and I got these issues with the idea of working with a guy who is _crazier than me!_ Who the fuck _tries_ something like that?"

It was a little too late to realise the mistake it had been to leave Wade to wake up alone. Best to make the most of the situation – let him get his doubts in the open, and deal with them before they had any more time to fester. The irony was that Wade's concerns weren't ridiculous, or even unfounded – Cable had simply not counted on him to protest quite this much.

"Would you believe I got a fortune cookie telling me to look forward to a visit from a troubled stranger who was not what he seemed?" he suggested.

"Hey, I once got one that said 'the path to spiritual peace would take me to find my centre somewhere I never expected'. Don't see _me_ running off to the Himalayas and opening up my knees to see if that's where my little black heart was hiding itself, do you? _Try again_."

Apparently Cable was going to have to resort to the truth. Or at least, a version of events containing enough truth to sound convincing. "I consider myself a good judge of people."

"Meaning?"

"I'm a mind reader."

"Nice try, but I got a doctor's note saying I don't have to do that class."

"Oh?"

"This bit up here," Wade tapped his head with his free hand, "regenerates all the time along with the rest of me. S'what gives me my _superhuman_ attention span, in case you were wondering. Psycho types can't get in."

Now that was interesting. "I was wondering – I've rarely encountered a mind as hard to get a grip on as yours. Your thoughts keep... _shifting_. Fragments and images under a thick haze."

Wade's gun dropped a fraction under a startled look, he seemed to be trying to decide whether Cable was bullshitting him.

" _Emotional_ reactions, though – those I can skim off the surface. Even from you. I was _very_ sure about what went through your mind when you first saw me," Cable reminded him. "And being seen without your mask on bothers you a lot more than you wanted to admit, doesn't it?"

The gun clicked back into its previous position. "Y'know, reminding me how ripe I was to take advantage of ain't helping your case much."

"Wade," said Cable looking calmly at the gun, "for all the show you're putting on, I'm fairly confident you're not the kind of man who'd kill someone he's just slept with."

"...okay, _maybe_ , you have a point," Wade allowed grudgingly, tightening his fingers around the gun, "but I might also be the kinda guy who gets an itchy trigger finger when he's angry and who thinks there's no reason you couldn't finish this chat with a couple of bullets in your legs."

The edge of the bench seemed suddenly sharper under Cable's arms. "I'll keep that in mind," he said, grimacing a little. "But what I said about your emotional state from yesterday I only meant as an example. I didn't ask you to work for me because you were easy, Wade. I did it because my instinct tells me you'll be worth the investment."

"Uh-huh," Wade did not sound any more convinced, "so for everyone who's just tuned in, are these your hippie new-age psychic instincts, or is this coming from somewhere below the belt? 'Cause either way, they're setting ya up for a world of disappointment."

"You think you're _not_ worth it?"

Wade made an exasperated grunting noise. "Hve I told you how much I fucking hate you yet today?"

Cable elected to ignore that. "Tell me, why are you working for Tolliver?"

Wade shrugged. "Good pay, good hours, lots of mindless violence, which I happen to be pretty good at – and it's not like I _need_ a job that comes with a dental plan."

"Then it's never occurred to you that you could be more than a well-paid thug?"

"Oh, I could be _your_ well-paid thug?"

"In a word, yes. In more words, if you think an arms dealer like Tolliver is one and the same as a man trying to give a new generation of mutants the skills the world will need in times ahead, you're going to find the work I have in mind for you something of a surprise."

"Sounds like the same package to me."

"Then you'll be in for an even bigger surprise. You have a gift, Wade. What you paid for it," here Cable's eyes dropped back to Wade's skin, the way he twitched under the gaze suggesting Cable's guess was on point, "doesn't change that. What makes you so sure the state of your skin and your talent for murder define all you can do with it?"

"The backup career in _classical ballet_ came apart when they told me no-one was making tutus to fit hips like these," Wade spat. "You had that one at 'talent'. Not interested in your twelve-step-program to not being a chump."

"There's no program. There's just me." Cable took a step forward, his chest pressing right against the barrel of the gun. "Since you're determined to make this difficult, I'm going to be straight with you on this. You want to know why I'm taking chances with a man of questionable morals working on an enemy's pay check, and I'm answering: because I want to see what you do with the opportunity. I can't force you to rehabilitate. I don't have time for charity cases. I'm under no illusions about how far a man like you should be trusted, which is _why_ I'm going out of my way to give you a little more incentive not to double-cross me. What I'm going to give you in exchange is a chance to surprise me."

"And if I don't?" Wade sounded unmoved. "Living down to expectations is kinda my speciality."

"Then you're still making more money than what your present boss is paying you," Cable pointed out, evenly, "and I'm sure I can still find ways to make use of you."

"Y'know, one thing you _haven't_ covered yet," Wade said, pointedly, "is what happens if I take all your fifteen-hundred-a-week-plus-perks-and-say, _go fuck yourself_."

"Then you walk out of here, and we never mention this again."

For several seconds, nothing happened, save for the face under the Deadpool mask crunching even deeper into angry indecision. The gun didn't budge.

"If you need some time to think about it..." Cable offered. It was hard to tell whether Wade's silence was a good sign or a bad one. "I'm not forcing you to give me a definite answer here and now."

"Uh-huh. _Time_. Sure." The gun flicked back into a holster at Wade's side, and Cable started breathing a little more deeply again. "Sounds like a great offer, seriously. Tell you what, Nathan – don't call me, I'll call you."

The kitchen door rattled for several seconds behind him. The footsteps in the corridor faded in the direction of the nearest exit.

Cable stared into the bottom of a still-empty coffee mug, and went to check whether the water had gone cold yet.

Well, that could have gone better. Could have gone worse – he hadn't actually been shot, in the vitals or otherwise. He had to consider the possibility he'd come on a little _too_ strong.

But he could still credit himself with giving Wade plenty of food for thought, at least. And, he remembered with a satisfied smirk, quite a night as well.

 


	2. Chapter 2

The rooftops of the warehouse district provided neither the fastest route through the area nor any sort of real privacy, so there were likely a number of people nearby that day who heard contextless snatches of the 'conversation' making its swift-footed way over their heads. Piecing together the dialogue in full, however, would have been a more difficult task. The path the voices followed was erratic in a way that would have had a parkour expert eagerly taking notes one minute, and sobbing into his hands the next, as it found excuses to go zigzagging between rooftops more than a dozen feet apart, or to scale obstacles that could have been easily avoided. Keeping up long enough to hear the whole thing would have taken someone with the tracking skills of a dedicated ninja (or, in a pinch, a seagull following a lucky flight path) – and even if one had been present, making sense of any of it all would still have been far beyond most listeners.  
  
The assembled narrative went like this:  
  
"Hey boss," the first voice began. "I bet you're just on the edge of your seat waiting to hear how the job went last night, huh?" It wasn't a particularly nice voice, or a happy one – and nor, apparently, the voice of a man overly concerned by the risks to his job security posed by delivering the words 'hey boss' in tones most people usually reserve for statements like ' _sure_ , let's try that! It only _nearly_ got us killed the last fifteen times we tried it!'.  
  
"Why yes, Deadpool, I trust you have a good explanation for why it took you nearly twenty-four hours to complete a relatively simple assassination task," replied the second voice. While distinctly deeper than the first voice and far too clear to be coming from a cell phone, the careful listener would have noted what made the difference was roughly that same quality that separated a normal voice from an exaggerated falsetto. The careful listener would also have noticed only one set of footsteps.  
  
"Okay, y'see," said the first voice, now adding a trace of nervousness to its many and varied qualities, "it was like this: when I got out of there my teleport belt was on the fritz, so I had to take the subway, but there was this whole thing with some guard who had this idea that I was supposed to _pay_ for a ticket, so I missed my stop somehow, and then on the way out there were these _mimes_ by the exit and you reasonably can't expect a guy to have to walk past mimes and _not_ beat them all to a bloody pulp, can you? And... say, is that a new hat? I like it, nice, er, brim, it really brings out your, er, coat?"  
  
"Truly fascinating, Deadpool," said the second voice, "but even in your vocalised imagination, I am infinitely more interested in the question: _were you successful?_ "  
  
"Was I successful? Well, look at it this way – if we're rating success on a scale from zero to ten, where ten is 'I iced the guy and made it home in time to catch the theme music on _Scrubs_ ' and a zero is 'I screwed it up so bad I came home with half the superhero population and the feds _and_ an angry ex-wife I didn't even know you _had_ on my tail' and – whoa – easy there, I'm not saying I _did_ screw up, that was just to keep things in perspective, 'cause on that scale I'm rating at _least_ a comfy seven-and-a-half..."  
  
The second voice was not mollified by this eminently reasonable argument. "So what you are telling me is, you _failed_. Your target was not eliminated."  
  
"Okay, okay, yeah, maybe he's not feeling all that 'eliminated' just yet, but if we're getting technical, is it fair to heap all the blame on me?" the first voice complained, growing steadily more defensive. "Because I'm thinking when you sent me after the guy, I wasn't working with all the _facts_ , boss. You say 'murder', I say 'how messy?', but from now on maybe I'm going to say, 'are you sure there's nothing you forgot to warn me about?' Like maybe the guy shoots laser-beams out of his nose or can hex you into acting like a chicken with the _power of his mind_ , or he can knock you off your feet by hitting a pressure point on your neck – or maybe he's just a kinky bastard with a thing for molesting his prisoners into submission and a really irritating smirk and a nice ass and _really_ good hands..."  
  
The footsteps slowed to a halt.  
  
"What are you looking at, stupid bird!" the first voice snapped. There was a sudden squawk, and a hail of feathers.  
  
When the speech began again, it came out rather more subdued.  
  
"Okay, maybe wanna leave the 'who's fault' part out. Could just tell him I stuffed it, what's the worst he could do? Besides wiring my mouth shut and flaying half the flesh off my bones..."  
  
After a minute had passed there was the loud thump of someone sitting down heavily on an old corrugated iron roof.  
  
"Fuck," muttered the voice quietly.  
  
A while later, the footsteps started moving again, but what this new direction meant after all the twists and turns the path had already taken would've been anyone's guess.  
  


* * *

  
Tabitha was almost done reshelving the books displaced during the last incident in the library (and looking forward to spending some time with _her_ kind of reading material, which contained more glossy colour pictures and would be out of date before it was a fraction of the age of anything on this shelf) when a voice said, "Hey X-Teen, you look like a chick who knows her way around; where do they file the overstuffed cyborg G.I. Joes in this joint?"

She whipped around, mouth dropping open. The owner of the voice was wearing a familiar red and black costume, and twirling a gun in a debatably casual sort of way.

"Is it A for asshole, B for batshit, C for crazy or D for deadman? I was going to try 'psycho', but I never remember how you spell it."

The rest of the books did not get shelved.

* * *

  
Twenty seconds passed between when Cable heard the fight start and the moment he burst into the library – a lifetime by battlefield reckoning (often literally). He already knew what he was going to see – you didn't quickly forget a voice like that one, especially not at that volume.

In point of fact, the first thing he saw was Shatterstar being hurled straight past him and into a bookshelf, which rocked back and forth precariously on impact, ejecting a load of anthropology hardbacks in protest. He slid to the floor, rolled to his feet and was just about to leap back into the fray when he realised everyone else in the room had caught sight of Cable standing in the doorway and frozen like guilty schoolchildren caught egging the headmaster's car.

It must have been the look on his face. They hadn't done anything _wrong_ – not most of them – but Cable wasn't in the mood to take prisoners. Lord knew he hadn't expected a lot from Deadpool, but even that had clearly been too much.

"Well, this is awkward," said a gravely voice, and that was when Boomer took the chance to elbow Deadpool in the stomach and twist out of his grip, and Cannonball barrelled into him, not stopping until the interloper had been driven all the way into the far wall.

In any other circumstances, Cable would have been proud of them.

"Hold!" he yelled before Shatterstar could join in and inflicted anything irreversible – then spent a dangerous moment wondering why he'd bothered. It was the rational option – it would be futile to imagine Wade was going to _learn_ anything from pain alone no matter how badly he deserved it. It had been rational to accept Deadpool had double-crossed him from the moment he heard those noises, but there'd still been that last, stupid hope there might be any other explanation, and having that dashed hadn't left him feeling particularly rational. "Stand down, Cannonball; he's not getting up."

"I was _using_ that spine!" Deadpool gurgled.

Cable shot him a look, and watched Deadpool swallow nervously.

"Aha, nope, no getting up here. I'll just chill down here a while, wait for those vertebrae to knit..." Under Cable's glare, he trailed off. "Would you believe me if I told you this is not what it looks like?"

"Isn't it?" said Cable. Deadpool wilted a little more. If he thought he had any chance of making Cable believe that he was even more fool than he'd been given credit for.

"You get one chance to convince me it isn't," Cable pronounced. "Count yourself lucky. If you'd injured _anyone_ on my team..."

"I'm gonna want to think carefully about how I answer that one, aren't I?" said Deadpool, nervously.

"Only if you do it _fast_."

"We caught him breaking in!" blurted Boomer, all in a too-defensive rush. "He was looking for you!"

The interruption could have been better timed. To be fair, none of the kids had the context to understand why Cable was taking this so personally; Boomer was confused, and worried, and just wanted to make sure none of it was _her_ fault.

"Thank you, Boomer," he said, teeth grinding over the words, "but there's only one person here with anything to explain."

"Anyone can see he came back to finish the job," said Siryn; she'd been hovering on the edge of the fight when Cable came in, seeking an opening that would let her use her scream without hitting a teammate.

"I might not have been!" Deadpool protested.

"Sure, I bet 'deadman' is a term of endearment where you come from," snapped Boomer.

"...harmless hyperbole?" Deadpool tried.

" _Deadpool_ ," growled Cable.

"Okay, okay, so the _possibility_ that _maybe_ this _might_ be going to end in violence was on my mind when I got here. I'm a professional merc, you can't blame me for having a backup plan, like if negotiations went all _5th Element_..."

"Strange how that happens when you start negotiations with your fists," said Cable, missing the reference but catching the gist.

"They started it!"

"After _you_ broke in."

"Well, jeez, _sorry_ if I thought maybe you would'a _told_ them 'hey, send that Deadpool-guy in to see me if he comes past again, I made him this offer he'll want to talk about.'"

The tension in the room increased slightly.

"Cable, what's he talking about?" Cannonball asked, voice cautious.

"Or was I not supposed to mention that in front of the kids?" said Deadpool, with mock innocence.

Cable pushed aside an impulse to put his head in his hands. "Leave us," he told the others.

"What, _again?_ " said Boomer.

"There won't be a third time," Cable said firmly, keeping his eyes on Deadpool.

He would have been more concerned if they hadn't been skeptical; good soldiers couldn't be expected to go on blindly accepting their leader's judgement when _this_ was the result, but they filed out, Shatterstar muttering about honour in combat while doing his best to suppress a limp.

Another crime to be chalked down on Deadpool's list when he'd already betrayed Cable's trust and forced him to question every (admittedly considerable) risk he'd taken in dealing with the mercenary since their first meeting, and was now rapidly grinding Cable's patience down to razor-width. He'd be lucky if any of this was still salvageable.

"Well?" he prompted, after the footsteps in the hallway had faded, wanting nothing more than to get this over with. "Whatever you came to 'talk' about, now would be the time."

Deadpool, who may have just realised that any hope he'd had that Cable would hold back evaporated with the audience, looked no less nervous.

"No fair heaping pressure on a guy with a broken spine," he grumbled.

"Your spine isn't broken. I can see you moving your feet."

"I could have a skull fracture?" Deadpool tried.

"That could certainly be arranged."

Deadpool shifted in a twitchy sort of way that suggested he was weighing his chances of making it to the exit against the very real risk of being seen moving. "Uh, I seem to have caught you in a bad mood, maybe I could come back later?"

"It's getting worse the longer you keep stalling for time," Cable growled.

"Maybe I haven't made up my mind," Deadpool grumbled, sounding petulant. "Maybe breaking in was one stupid, impulsive whim and what I really need is to be sent home to have a good think about what I've done. You did say you'd give me time to think about it!"

"I did," Cable agreed. "You thanked me by breaking into my base _again_. Time's. Up."

Deadpool hesitated. "...you don't feel like 'convincing' me some more, do you?"

Several hovering pieces in Cable's mental model of Deadpool's psyche slotted themselves into place, not all contributing to the picture in ways he liked. This time, the face-hand impulse won. "Is that what this is about?"

"I'm hovering right on the borderline! It could make all the difference!"

"And afterwards I suppose you'll tell me you still haven't decided," Cable suggested icily, "and we can do this again next week?"

"Er..." Everything about Deadpool's demeanour implied he was finding that idea undeniably appealing. "I'm up for it if you are." Somewhere around the end of the sentence, he made the mistake of looking Cable directly in the eye. "...you're not up for it, are you?"

"Deadpool, what part of my offer wasn't clear to you?"

"You wanna _list?_ " With any chance of sex explicitly off the table, Deadpool was getting grouchier at a fairly spectacular rate.

"Try me."

"Oh, lemme think," Deadpool snarked, with an edge to his voice Cable remembered all too well from their encounter in the kitchen. "How about how I just bet this is the kind of outfit where I sign up and all is peachy and good until I have _one little accident_ where some unlucky bystander gets a little bit dead, and I'm out like pouches on shoulderpads? (No offence, by the way.) Or if I'm wrong, then it's only because you don't even have that kind of cash you offered me and are obviously using your sexy, masculine wiles to seduce poor little innocent me into spilling all his juicy insider info about your arch-nemesis? How about the part where you seem to be under the impression that _sleeping with me is a good idea?_ "

Vicious accusations, but that didn't matter nearly as much as the content. "Now we're getting somewhere. Most of those reservations were quite reasonable."

"Surprisingly reasonable guy, that's me."

"And your solution is... that I sleep with you again?"

Again, that made Deadpool hesitate. "Okay, so I realise at first glance that doesn't make much sense..."

"Yes?"

"...but if you sit down and think about it for a bit, you'll be giving me some much needed time to think up a better way to spin this?"

"Wade," said Cable, patience once more eroding rapidly, "you didn't actually have anything to talk to me about when you got here, did you? Those 'issues' you listed for me just now were the first three things off the top of your head. The only thing you had prepared when you got here was your fists."

The way Deadpool's head twitched up at the sound of his real name was embarrassing. "Hey, I always said I came here to talk!" he protested. "Fighting was only the backup plan!"

And there Cable's patience finally snapped.

"Was it?" he yelled, kneeling so he could lean right in Deadpool's face; close enough to almost hear his pulse racing under his skin. "Why don't I tell you what _I_ think your plan was? I think fighting your way in _was_ the plan, and _this_ was the backup. You counted on still having a chance at getting back into Tolliver's good graces if you killed me today, and if you failed, you thought you could sing me a song about coming here to talk and walk away."

The equipment that would have been needed to measure the time between the formation of the protest in Deadpool's brain and when it made it out of his mouth was probably too advanced even for Cable's period, and he saw it coming a mile away. "Whatever excuse you're about to give me, _don't_. I gave you a chance to make something out of your last failure – a chance that was already far more than you deserved – and this is how you thank me for it!"

The motion of Deadpool's throat when he swallowed was even more obvious close up. "...can I talk yet?"

"I'm not done." Getting himself under control somewhat, but not leaning back an inch, Cable continued, "Disappointing as you've been, I'm going to give you one last chance to change your mind. The one thing you have made very clear to me today is that, no matter what you convinced yourself you were here to do, you don't actually want to kill me."

The mask did very little to cover the deer-in-the-headlights look Deadpool had taken on. "I don't?"

"That's why you froze when you saw me burst in. You'd probably spent a long time planning what you were going to do when you saw me, but it all fell apart when you had to look me in the eye, didn't it? Set against any chance of getting captured and seduced again, I'll bet that going back to Tolliver didn't seem nearly as appealing. You _want_ an excuse to take me up on my offer. You just don't want to admit you want it."

"Fucking hate it when you pull that psycho-anal shit," Deadpool muttered.

Cable straightened himself up, trading proximity in for height. "And I hate having my time wasted."

With Cable out of his face, Deadpool pulled at his collar and seemed to start breathing again. There was a dangerous moment where Cable would've sworn he was tensing to spring back into his witty rejoinder routine again, but it faltered before it ever got off the ground. Something very much like grudging honesty took its place. "Sheesh, okay, your offer sounds great – it sounds _too good to be true_. 'Scuse me for wondering where the catch is."

"The only catch is that you'll be doing my kind of work – and you already knew that, or you wouldn't have asked me whether you'll be fired for collateral damage. This is going to be a far sight from what you're accustomed to doing for a living, _but_ whatever you've heard about the X-Men's attitude to casualties doesn't apply to my team."

"...so, this _isn't_ one of those ultra-heroic power-of-love-and-sacrifice-and-the-name-of-the-moon-type gigs?" Deadpool sounded disbelieving, and possibly just a little bit disappointed.

"I wouldn't be hiring you if I had jobs requiring _subtlety_ in mind. And while I'm addressing your concerns, if you're worried about whether I've got the funds to pay the salary I offered you, I'd be happy to show you the state of the relevant accounts – and pay you your first month in advance."

"You're not worried I'm gonna run off with it?" said Deadpool. The idea of being trusted that much seemed to make him faintly uncomfortable.

"That would be where those _perks_ we discussed come in."

"And what's it going to do for my professional reputation if it gets around that I'll switch sides for a bigger paycheck?"

"Do you have a reputation?"

"I'd like to have one some day, thank you very much!"

"Then why not let me help you establish one as a man in high demand, who's worth a decent salary? Finally, Wade," Cable went on before there could be any more interruptions, "since you've gone to so much effort to stress your 'professional' status, I don't expect you to share any details about past employers. As of now, I don't have any reason to believe you've ever met Tolliver face to face, do I?"

"Huh. Guess not."

There was a pause, while Deadpool appeared to think seriously about this.

"Anything else?" Cable prompted.

"I'm gonna have to put up with you pulling this psychology crap a lot, aren't I?"

"No-one said this job was going to be perfect."

"You do realise I'm under a contract requiring me to give fourteen days notice before any acts of shocking betrayal..."

"Nothing shocking about leaving for a better offer, is there?"

He'd thought they were finally getting somewhere, but over the next several seconds he was treated to the sight of everything readable in Deadpool's face retreating behind the fabric of his mask.

"Just so I'm clear," said Deadpool, " _do_ I have what you would call a choice here? If I say no, exactly what are my odds of getting out of here without getting shot in the head?"

"If you say no, you leave in one piece. But you won't get another chance to change your mind."

"And if it doesn't work out for me I can leave any time, right?"

"Absolutely." When Deadpool didn't immediately reply, he added, "Is that a yes?"

" _Fine_ , you were right," Deadpool admitted, grudgingly. "I don't really want to kill you. What I really want to do is punch your face in a couple times, no offence."

It would have been more convincingly threatening earlier in the conversation. "Is that before or after you have me 'convince' you some more?"

"Probably before. After sex I get all mellow and _snugly_ and I'm useless at violence for a few hours." Deadpool fidgeted on the floor for another couple of seconds, then pulled himself to his feet. "So it's like this," he said, looking Cable right in the eye, "if I go back to Tolliver now, I get punished for screwing up. If I take you up on this, I get a pay rise, _and_ I keep all my teeth. Even if I think you're a nutjob, I'd be nuts _not_ to take the job, right?"

"Sounds fair," said Cable, not sure quite what point Wade was making.

"So what I'm saying is, I'm taking the job for the very reasonable hourly rates and lack of the involuntary torture clause. _Not_ for the sex. The sex is just the rose in the tip jar that brightens my day but does not replace the tip _or_ get you better service. Are we clear?"

 _Ah_. "Crystal."

"Are you sure we're clear? Because there's this thing on your face that looks a lot like it might be some kind of a smirk."

"It's just something I do sometimes."

"As long as we're clear. So," he added, pushing off the wall and approaching Cable in a meaningful way, "any thoughts on how we should celebrate?"

You almost had to admire his single-mindedness. "Is this really the time?"

"I took the job! That I'm not taking for the sex. I did mention that, right?"

"And thanks to your abject failure to figure that out _before_ you got here, my team is waiting down the hall for an explanation as to why I've left you in one piece this long. I don't think they deserve to be kept in suspense, do you?"

"Oh," said Wade. "Right. Them."

"If they aren't enthusiastic about the thought of working with you, that's going to be on your shoulders."

Deadpool looked sheepish. "I could pass it off as a humorous misunderstanding?"

"I don't think they found it very funny."

"Is Hallmark making 'sorry for punching your face in' cards yet?"

"Not that I know of."

"Then I guess you'll just have to tell them what an upstanding professional I am in my field and how you have total faith in me."

Cable looked at him.

"You're the one who was so sure hiring me was a good idea!"

"You have no idea how much I'm questioning it already," Cable assured him, leading the way out. "They're my team. Let me handle it."

Out of the corner of his eye he caught sight of Deadpool shrugging. "You're the boss."

"Now you're getting the idea."


	3. Chapter 3

The news went down... about as well as could be expected.  
  
"You did _what?_ " said Boomer – barely ahead of the chorus of similar exclamations from those who that took a few seconds longer to get over the initial shock.  
  
"I hired him," Cable repeated.  
  
Deadpool waved at the assembled team. "Hi guys. I'm Deadpool, and I will be your local merc-for-hire for this outfit! Wow, how times have changed, huh? Seems like only yesterday I was breaking in here and rubbing all your faces in the carpet..."  
  
"That was _twenty minutes ago_ ," said Siryn.  
  
"...it was? Is it just me or was that a really long twenty minutes?"  
  
Whatever the figure, it had been more than time for Boomer and the rest who'd been in the library to bring the other half of the team up to speed on what had just gone down, and the story may have grown in the telling. Rictor looked every bit as furious as the original four, Wolfsbane and Sunspot less so, but still uneasy. Domino was uncharacteristically silent, though she did not look pleased.  
  
" _As I was saying_ ," Cable said loudly, " _that_ was the 'offer' he referred to earlier. There was a... misunderstanding over some of the details. We've cleared it up, and he's taking the job."  
  
"You call that a _misunderstanding?_ " said Boomer. "I don't believe this, Cable, you didn't even hear the things he was calling you when he showed up!"  
  
"A fairly big misunderstanding," Cable clarified. "It'll be coming out of his pay."  
  
"It what?" said Deadpool. Cable glared at him, and for once he took the hint to shut up.  
  
The rest of the team exchanged glances.  
  
"Why?" said Siryn, looking very, very skeptical.  
  
"Because I'm leading a team mostly staffed by teenaged rookies against an opponent who hires professional mercenaries. I'm taking the opportunity to stack the odds in our favour."  
  
"We can take a few ordinary rent-a-thugs," argued Rictor.  
  
"Then you'll last for as long as our enemies take to hire someone _better_."  
  
"Cable, I'm not sure if I've got this straight," said Cannonball, trying very hard to sound reasonable, despite a frown that looked like it was about to start forming scar tissue. "He broke into the mansion, tried to kill you, nearly killed two of us, and you offered him a _job?_ "  
  
"I'd hardly have made the offer if he _hadn't_ proven himself capable." Cable looked pointedly at the back of the group. "It's worked for us before."  
  
Several people craned around to see who he was looking at. The target himself did not take the implications well.  
  
"You compare your first encounter with a warrior from another world to _this?_ " Shatterstar seethed. "Scum whose allegiance may be bought and sold?"  
  
"He's right, Cable, that was different!" said Cannonball.  
  
"It's _always_ different," said Cable, rapidly losing patience with this line of complaint. "Not everyone has the luxury of picking and choosing who they work for. Do you think _I_ always did? Or Domino?"  
  
The room fell into an uncomfortable silence.  
  
"I'm giving him the opportunity to work for someone better," Cable went on. "If anyone has an actual problem with that, now is the time to speak up."  
  
The silence went on, broken only – and only if you were Cable – by the furious whirring of half a dozen minds.  
  
"We don't even have any idea who he is!" Boomer tried, to a rumble of half-hearted agreement, though she'd sounded a little too desperate for the complaint to come out with much weight.  
  
Cable raised an eyebrow. "Deadpool?"  
  
"Yes?"  
  
"You have a last name?"  
  
"Oh, right. 'S 'Wilson'."  
  
"There you go," Cable told the masses.  
  
"You didn't even know his _name?_ "  
  
"Hey, it's not like it was going to be 'Hitler'!" Deadpool protested.  
  
"Wade," said Cable, "I think perhaps you should wait outside."  
  
Deadpool stared at him mutely for a moment, then obeyed, closing the door behind him.  
  
It probably would have been less disconcerting if he had argued about it.  


* * *

With Wade out of direct sight and hearing (and the freedom thus granted to, perhaps... _exaggerate_ certain facets of the truth for the benefit of his audience), it took another fifteen minutes or so of heated discussion before Cable could send his team away, unconvinced but at least mollified into some sort of provisional acceptance that their leader knew what he was doing. It was still a long way from comfortable for all involved, and even that had nothing on seeing Domino parked firmly in her corner after everyone else had left.  
  
Silence from someone who'd known him as long as Domino could speak volumes. He'd half-expected her to let him have it the moment the footsteps in the corridor faded out of hearing; when she didn't, he was more than a little tempted to get out while he had the chance, but thought better of it before he could make it through the doorway. He knew she wasn't happy, she knew _he_ knew, and there'd be no good done by letting this fester.  
  
"Penny for your thoughts," he offered. "Since you were good enough not to share them in front of the kids."  
  
"Interesting way to put it," said Domino. "What's the going rate on _your_ thoughts lately? Because I swear, I cannot tell what the hell you're thinking anymore. You turn that Morlock girl away at the door, but you hire _that?_ "  
  
Cable grimaced. Domino was very, very good at keeping emotions under wraps – even under scrutiny from a psychic – but now that he'd given her an opening she was holding nothing back. Nowhere in his plan of hiring Wade had he counted on her to react this badly. But if he couldn't be entirely honest about some of his own recent decisions, he could at least be truthful about that much. "I would've thought you of all of us would have had no problem working with another mercenary."  
  
"There are mercs, and there are _mercs_ , Nate, and I shouldn't have to remind you what kind of merc changes sides for a 'better offer' at gunpoint."  
  
Cable turned in the doorway, matching her glare. "He was never at gunpoint. I made it clear-"  
  
"That he could go back to Tolliver and tell him all about his failure if he didn't want to take you up on it?" Face to face with nearly seven feet of blood and metal, and Domino didn't back down an inch. He always had liked that about her. "There's a reason why only scum like Tolliver hire his type. Face it, even if this _isn't_ one of Tolliver's plots, the only reason you give money to his kind is to pay him to stay away."  
  
"You never argued with how we hired Grisly." Actually, the more he thought about that particular counter-example, the less water it held, but Domino's only reaction to it was to press her mouth into a thin, hard line.  
  
"This isn't one of your old merc teams." Domino advanced on him briskly as she spoke. "Put Deadpool on a team with these kids of yours and he's going to be a liability at best, the last mistake you _ever_ get to make at worst."  
  
"That's a pretty severe judgement of a man you've spoken to all of once."  
  
"It's a lot more rational than deciding that what a man who's tried to kill you _twice_ really needs is a second chance. What's this really about, Nate? Some karma thing? I've never heard anyone talk that much about 'second chances' as you just did who wasn't expecting to need one of his own."  
  
There was no good way to argue with that one. "I'm fairly sure I used up my second chance some years ago," he admitted.  
  
It sounded like an attempt to back down gracefully, though he hadn't really expected it to mollify her much, and it didn't. In two more steps, Domino was in the doorway with him, forcing him to lean back out of her way. "You've changed since last time we worked together, Nate, and I don't like it. You know I'm on your side wherever you take this team, but I'm giving this a week before it blows up in your face, and I'm not even going to enjoy getting to say I told you so."  
  
Parting blow delivered, Domino stalked away down the corridor without another word.  
  
Cable breathed out as she left. Silently, he listed a number of exceedingly painful things that would be done to Deadpool if he _didn't_ make up for all of this, then buried the thought somewhere it couldn't do too much damage. Wade was the last person he could afford to take this out on, deserving or otherwise, and the less time Cable left him alone with his thoughts after the decision he'd made in the library, the better.  
  
Harder to bury was the nagging urge to pick apart the question of what could have prompted Domino's last accusation, or whether she might have had a point. He probably had changed – if so, he'd no cause to wonder why, and very little reason to doubt that it was for the better in the long run, but the reasons he'd given her for leaving their old relationship in the past had sounded a little weak even to his own ears, no matter how accepting she'd seemed at the at the time. Having all the answers was well and good in theory, but in real life people tended to lose patience if you couldn't show them your working out.  


* * *

Deadpool was standing in the corridor just outside the library when Cable found him, leaning against the wall and staring at the opposite one, arms folded.  
  
"They scheduling the mutiny yet?" he asked, when he heard Cable approach.  
  
"Much worse than that," Cable told him.  
  
Deadpool looked up a bit, doing a fairly mediocre job of feigning disinterest.  
  
"I convinced them to give you a chance," Cable finished.  
  
"Ooh, my favourite game, living down to people's expectations," Deadpool spat. "Hey, they don't wanna work with me, I don't wanna work with them. We'll get on great. We can all bond over how crazy our boss is."  
  
Cable nearly reminded him of how much of this he'd brought on himself, but in a flash of sympathy he let the opportunity pass. Poor fool. It would always be easier for someone like Deadpool to make a show of being too jaded to care than admit how much rejection hurt – even from such complete strangers as these.  
  
"So how'd you field the 'why should we trust him?' question?" Deadpool asked.  
  
"You were listening in?"  
  
"No. Just happen to not be completely made of _stupid_."  
  
"The one thing you _did_ achieve by breaking in again," said Cable, dryly amused, "is that no-one seriously believes this could be one of Tolliver's plots to get an agent inside. I assured them I'd be keeping an eye on you. I didn't go into all the details of the _incentives_ involved, if that's what you're asking."  
  
"S'pose you don't want me sharing that one around, huh?" said Wade, with only the faintest of sniggers. "Or, y'know, everyone's gonna want one..."  
  
"I'd appreciate it if you were discrete about that aspect of our arrangement, yes."  
  
"Discrete, sure. I can do discrete. It's that word that means, 'things smashed up into lots of little bits', right?"  
  
"You're thinking of something else." Cable tapped him on the shoulder and jerked his head down the corridor, indicating Wade should follow him.  
  
"We going somewhere?"  
  
"Still want your chance to punch me in the face?"  
  
"Like you wouldn't _believe_ ," said Wade, with feeling.  
  
"Then maybe you'll get one."  


* * *

  
The door to the Danger Room was fitted with more emergency override features than any other piece of tech Cable had ever encountered in this century; nevertheless, it was still possible to lock it from the inside.

Deadpool looked around, not particularly impressed. "New age ballroom?"

"We call it the Danger Room," Cable explained. "Did you say something?" he added, when Deadpool made a funny noise.

"Me? Nah, just waiting for the 'dundun _dun_ ' sound effect. Danger Room, huh?"

The only efficient way to communicate with Deadpool seemed to require ignoring roughly half of everything he said. "We use it to run holographic training simulations."

"High-tech shadowboxing?"

Cable input the code to make the room resemble a conventional mat room, and watched Wade jump as the floor changed under his feet. "Very high-tech. The holograms this room generates are quite solid."

Wade poked the floor with a toe. "You could've just said you had your own Holod..." There his head snapped up sharply. "Waiiiit, you people have your own Holodeck and you _encourage_ it to attack you?"

Possibly more than half. "Within pre-set parameters. That _is_ what it was built for."

"Uh-huh. So _on average_ , how often does this thing spontaneously gain sentience, disable its own safeties and go on a rampage of terror and destruction?"

"...is there some context I'm missing here?"

Wade spread his hands emphatically. "I'm just saying, you build yourself a super high-tech room that can make anything you like out of thin air and you teach it to simulate all your favourite enemies in high-def 4D, sooner or later it's going to get carried away and overtake the Enterprise. Well-known principle."

"Of course, Wade," said Cable, no longer paying much attention. "And the government watches you through your computer screen too."

Wade snickered. "Joke's on them if the FBI's watching _me_ at the computer..."

"Perhaps we could get on with this?" Cable suggested.

"Whatever you say, boss," said Wade, glibly. He hesitated. "What was 'this' again?"

"Well, if I'm going to make use of you," Cable finished inputting the last of his codes, and stepped into the room proper. "I need a better look at how you operate. Weapons on the floor, for now. Let's see what you're capable of bare-handed."

Wade shrugged, and unbuckled his katanas. On top of them went his guns, his other guns, his throwing knives, his extra-hidden throwing knives, a worryingly large pile of grenades...

By the time he was done, it occurred to Cable to wonder whether Wade might have an extra mutant power or two he didn't know about. He decided not to ask.

"So," said Wade, making a show of stretching and cracking various body parts, "what am I fighting first?"

From the look on his face as Cable stepped forward and arranged himself in a suitably inviting stance, he'd already guessed the answer.

"Me," said Cable, and watched Wade grin a little wider.

"Headshots totally not against the rules here, right?" smirked Wade.

"Of course not," said Cable, and ducked one half a second later.  


* * *

Whatever might be said for the rest of the team, Wade would have nothing to worry about when it came to meeting Cable's expectations.  
  
A healing factor might be one of the more reactive superpowers – it didn't grant one true super-strength or speed, or even the limited invulnerability of Cable's metal arm, but not even years of steroid abuse could come close to matching what it did for the body. He'd noted as much on his first meeting with Deadpool (on quite an intimate level), and seeing that body in action – without the stress of real combat to mar the experience – was a new kind of treat. Deadpool needed no encouragement to show off. He had a way of moving that was more acrobatic than it was efficient, though that might not be much disadvantage when you had a dozen times the natural stamina of any opponent, and it meant than when you saw three of his limbs flying at once you had very little time to guess which one was actually going to hit you. At any given moment it was all but impossible to guess what he might be going to do next.  
  
More often than not, he gave the strong impression even _he_ didn't know what he was going to do next. He also never stopped talking.  
  
"...so I yank it out and I say to the guy, 'excuse me, is this _your_ dagger? I found it _in my kidney_ ,' and he takes one look at me holding it in his face and pisses himself – though that could've been me, you do _not_ want to know what a punctured kidney smells like – "  
  
The power of a healing factor to enhance a man's lungs had been wildly understated, Cable reflected, as Wade casually dodged two punches and an elbow that should have gotten him in the nose without so much as pausing for breath. If he'd been born with a little more patience, he could have defeated any mortal opponent simply by wearing them down.  
  
"...and since I haven't had so much as a grunt to show for all my witty banter and _fascinating_ stories in the last three flying kicks and five roundhouse punches, I'm starting to think you're ignoring me, and that's plain _impolite_ , Nate. I do not know what it is about me that makes people do that – you'd think the least people could do is throw out the occasional 'shut the fuck up, Deadpool' to let you know you've still got their attention, but not listening at all, now what kind of behaviour is that? You never know when I'm going to say something like, 'next up, there will be a quick jab to the left, a feint to the right, and just when you're trying to guard the next blow, I will do the Hokey Pokey for five seconds leaving myself completely open'..."  
  
The niggling sense that he'd missed something hovered vaguely in the back of Cable's mind as he watched Wade feint and swung up an arm to block the kick he _saw_ coming, only to see the motion transform into some kind of twisting back-flip which flung Wade back several paces, where he proceeded, with vocal accompaniment, to stick his left foot in and his left foot out. By the time Cable had made sense of it all, he was done, and back to making his opponent duck under his next flying kick.  
  
"...and then you'll wish you'd been paying attention, won't you?" said Wade, smugly.  
  
"Let me guess how often you got 'attention seeking behaviour' on your report card in school," Cable muttered to himself.  
  
"And the DJ thanks all our listeners for choosing now to tune back into Double-Double-You FM, because yessiree, it's going to be _hits, hits, hits_ , coming your way!" The statement was punctuated by a flurry of punches. "Don't you change that channel, folks, 'cause we've got Wade Wilson's very own Olympic Special coming right up, followed by that old favourite, the Macarena!"  
  
The 'Olympic Special' was some kind of high-flying triple somersault that transformed into an axe-kick at the last moment, and had to be more of a show tactic than anything he could have expected to connect with what he was aiming it for. This time, Cable make a point of not throwing himself so far out of the way that he couldn't take advantage if Wade really was going to stand there and do a silly dance.  
  
"Whoops, sorry folks, did we just put the Hokey Pokey on again by mistake? _You put your right fist in, and you punch him in the mouth!_ "  
  
Cable was not entirely surprised to be punched square in the left side of his jaw, though he did at least have the satisfaction of seeing Wade wince and shake his hand in pain.  
  
"Damn, what did you make your jaw made out of?" he complained.  
  
"You probably don't want to know."  
  
"Not even a hint?" said Wade, dropping seamlessly back into his earlier pattern of dodging around like a five year old at a fairground, just outside Cable's range. "You can trust me to be understanding if you've got an artificial nose or reinforced concrete teeth or a secret compartment for smuggling emergency cyanide capsules in your jaw – who hasn't? I knew this guy once who had a whole skeleton covered in adamantium, keeps calling me and complaining about how he wants his healing factor back..."  
  
That sounded awfully familiar. "Goes by the name of Wolverine?"  
  
"You know Wolvy?"  
  
"Let's say I've punched him in the jaw a few times." Cable winced internally in memory. "Dented a joint once."  
  
"Oh yeah, that's our Wolvy," said Wade, fondly, and flipped suddenly upwards so that the next sentence came out upside-down, and travelling over Cable's head. "Am I getting warmer? That glowy eye of yours have a bit of internal framework?"  
  
"The glowing is a mutant feature. _Coincidentally_ , you're on the right track."  
  
"Huh. Wasn't figuring that arm of yours to be a tip of the iceberg thing."  
  
"I did try covering it with synth-skin some years ago." Natural as Wade might be at keeping his movements random, there was the odd pattern that emerged from time to time. A bit of quick judgement let him land a kick to Deadpool's midsection, but he rolled with it only a split second too late, and was back on his feet again the next. Even so...  
  
"The look didn't work for you?"  
  
"It didn't last that long when I kept doing this with it," said Cable, and punched Wade square in the face.  
  
Wade staggered, holding his head. "Ow, ow, oh my stars and canaries..."  
  
Cable made a mistake: in the face of an opponent who looked genuinely stunned, he hesitated. Wade's drunken staggering abruptly sprouted a swinging fist that caught in him hard in the right kidney. Half-winded, he took too long to get his guard back up.  
  
"Ooh, _there's_ a fleshy bit," said Wade, miraculously cured of all headache symptoms. "Why don't we see if it's the same the whole way up?"  
  
The second punch to his face hit on the right side of his jaw, and that one he felt.  
  
"Aww, was that against the rules? I would've asked if this was meant to be a clean fight, but you did say you wanted to see how I operate."  
  
"I did," Cable wheezed, wondering if Wade even understood the concept of a 'clean' fight. "That makes 'a couple of times'. Feeling better?"  
  
"Huh. I _am_ ," said Wade, looking surprised, before readying his fists again. "Think it stacks?"  
  
"Who knows?" saw Nate, as the throbbing in his jaw began to dull a little, and used a telekinetic nudge to tap Deadpool on the shoulder.  
  
It probably said a lot about Deadpool that his first impulse was to look over the opposite shoulder, but what mattered was that he was still in the act of looking back again when Cable tackled him and pinned him to the floor.  
  
"I also wanted to give you a feel for how _I_ operate," he told the struggling Wade, "Did I mention I'm not just telepathic?"  
  
It took Wade a few seconds to catch on. "You did that? You... whassaword, move stuff around too? Now that's just not _fair_ , boss!"  
  
"No, I suppose it isn't," said Cable, smirking. Wade squirmed a little more, though without any real intention of escaping. After a second, he grinned back.  
  
"We done here for the day?" he asked.  
  
"I think so, yes."  
  
"So," said Wade, noting their respective positions with what, minus the mask, would have certainly been a glint in his eye, "Whatdya want to do now?"  
  
"Hm," said Cable, still smirking, and leaned down, resettling his weight.  
  
"Hee," said Wade, catching on with no difficulty. "Gosh, boss, I had _no idea_ you might be thinking about ending our session like this." The tone of surprise would not have been particularly convincing even without the sensation of Wade, flexible as you please, running a foot up the inside of Cable's right leg.  
  
"What an oversight." Cable peeled back just the edge of Wade's suit at the join between mask and neck so he could get his mouth in there, the skin beneath warm from the exercise and just a little damp with perspiration. After his earlier observation about Wade's lung capacity, even the slightest hitch to his breath was all the more satisfying.  
  
"Wow, right here?" said Wade, not the least bothered by the prospect. The leg wrapping itself around Cable's hips would do its bit to prevent him from doing anything else; the first foot began making its way back down again. "Lotta kids running around this place; this room's got all those big windows..."  
  
"But the handy thing about a room decked out with sophisticated holographic technology," Cable told him, "is that what people see from the outside doesn't necessarily have to be what's going on _inside_."  
  
"You were _so_ planning this."  
  
"I like to be prepared for all eventualities." Cable slid a hand down Wade's body between them, and confirmed for himself that Wade was coming along _quite_ nicely. Not that a little encouragement would go to waste. The spandex of his costume left nothing to the imagination.  
  
"Say what you like about this job," panted Wade, as Cable's hand began to rub him firmly through his costume, "it has the best... ooh... _best_ perks _ever_. Nnnnngh, you're good at that. Want you to fuck me."  
  
"Really?" Cable would have had to admit he'd been counting on Wade to need some convincing to try out that particular activity. "Right now?"  
  
"Do I strike you as a patient guy, Nate? _Right_ now, _right_ here." Both 'rights' were emphasised with a very deliberate upward thrust against his hand, and a breathy quality that hinted – promised, almost – at how close Wade was to willing to beg for this. "Don't get me wrong. Doing you was _great_ , but it was so not where I was thinking we were going with me all tied up and you getting handsy. Had it stuck in my head like a damn advertising jingle. _Fuck me_."  
  
It would take a man with much more self-control than him to deny how very physically appealing he found that idea, but... "That's actually one thing I _wasn't_ prepared for."  
  
"Don't care," said Wade, working his hands inside Cable's pants. "Use saliva or whatever. Long as it ends with you sticking _this_ in and shaking it all about."  
  
Even _that_ sounded appealing, which may not have been a healthy sign. "You're sure?"  
  
"Oh, _now_ he wants to know if I'm sure. Sure I'm sure – I'm so sure I'm about to be _sure_ all over you."  
  
"...not too immediately, I hope."  
  
"Could use a bit 'a help with that." Wade let him go long enough to wriggle out of his costume, and Cable lasted all of another couple of seconds before giving up in the name of helping him get it off, as quickly as possible.  
  
His better judgement – sounding disturbingly like Domino – promised him he'd regret this in the morning, but in the heat of the moment, Wade was more than loud enough to drown it out.  


* * *

Some time later, with them both flat on their backs and panting, a very happy Wade said, "I am going to really, really like this job."  
  
Cable glanced at him out of the corner of an eye. Well, that was his secondary mission very much accomplished then, even if not quite by the means he'd intended.  
  
"Next time we're using real lube," he said, feeling – and sounding – a bit raw.  
  
"Ooh, _next time_. I like the sound of that. What are you doing, say, five minutes from now?"  
  
Nate groaned faintly. "This, I imagine."  
  
"Aww, did I wear you out?"  
  
"Not everyone has your healing factor, Wade," said Cable, then, perhaps against his better judgement, added "and I'm fairly sure I'm a number of years older than you are."  
  
"But looking very well preserved for a man of your vintage, I must say," said Wade, which sounded more like a real compliment before he added, "why, you've even still got most of your original parts! Maybe what you need is another upgrade or two, in certain places..."  
  
"I don't believe you just suggested that."  
  
"Did I mention how much I am going to _love_ this job? Reserving all rights to change my mind completely the moment the afterglow wears off, you understand."  
  
"Welcome to the team," Cable muttered.  
  
For several seconds, Wade was uncharacteristically silent.  
  
"Something on your mind?" said Cable – it would have obvious even to a non-psychic. When Wade didn't immediately reply, he guessed, "You're still worried about working with the rest of my team?"  
  
"Not _most_ of the team – okay, they hate me, I can't really argue with that," said Wade quickly, "but there's just, y'know..."  
  
"Wade?"  
  
"Remember that conversation we had about how you don't expect me to spill any details about my ex-boss?" said Wade after a bit, sounding a little nervous.  
  
Cable rolled to face Wade and propped himself up on an elbow. "Yes?"  
  
"That wasn't a contractual thing, right? More like an, 'unless I want to' sort of deal?"  
  
"If you want to share details about Tolliver, I'm all ears."  
  
"Don't know about _want_ to, but you know where I'm coming from – I'm working for you, he's trying to put you out of business in a permanent sort of way, I care about my job security, so if I happened to know some little detail that might be a life or death issue for this outfit, and possibly just a little on the time-sensitive side..."  
  
Cable, who'd been half-drowsing, woke up a lot very quickly. "Wade, what are you telling me?"  
  
"You know that merc lady in the meeting room before, panda-faced sorta look going...?"  
  
"You mean Domino?"  
  
" _Not_ Domino," said Wade, emphatically. " _Copycat_. Ex-girlfriend, actually. Very ex, just in case you were about to have any jealousy there, but I gotta say, _damn_ , you have not done jack until you've done it with a shapeshifter like 'Nessa."  
  
As usual, Wade took the longest way possible to get to the point, but when what he was saying added up, it came to a very worrying total. " _What?_ "  
  
" _Real_ Domino is doing a Jesus-impression down in Tolliver's basement. Hey, don't look at me, it was all Tolliver's plan! 'Nessa does her thing, sneaks in here, plants a bomb and blows you all to kingdom confetti. Only she's running a bit behind schedule and the boss was getting impatient, which is how come he sent me in to finish the job... you okay, Nate?"  
  
Cable should have been telling him he was insane, should have been telling him that he knew Domino too well for any doppelganger to fool him – he was more than a little bit psychic, for Askani's sake – but all he could think was that it had made no sense for Domino to be so angry with him hiring Wade – that _she hadn't called him out on bringing up Grisly_.  
  
"Wasn't going to bring this one up right away, but y'know, you called the meeting and there she was, and she knows I'm working for you..." Wade broke off as Cable, already on his feet, tossed him one of the towels that came with the mat room simulation.  
  
"Clean up and get dressed," he ordered, doing likewise.  
  
"Didn't I have five minutes?"  
  
"Five minutes are up. Time to start earning that salary – and I _swear_ , Deadpool, if you're lying to me about _any_ of this..."  
  
"Sheesh, I _know_. Sorry, boss, truth hurts and all that jazz. We gonna go get her right now?"  
  
So caught up was he in his own fury that Cable very nearly said 'yes' on the spot – of _course_ they could go 'get' an enemy agent who could pull off such a convincing impersonation of a woman he'd known for years that he'd never even questioned it, and on the word of a man he hardly knew. There were barely a dozen different ways the direct approach was guaranteed to fail.  
  
"Let me think," he said, and proceeded to do so while pulling clothes on as fast as he could. It had been over an hour since he spoke to 'Domino', she could have done _anything_...  
  
If he was lucky, he'd have one chance to get this right.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Plot Notes & Trivia**  
> (Totally unessential to the casual reader, though given how much of this story is based on bits of canon which most of the audience probably isn't that familiar with, this may become a regular thing)
> 
> If I'm ever bored enough, I could put together a quite a lengthy picspam post of all the many different interpretations by different artists of just how much of Cable's body is supposed to be metal. Answers range from just the arm and nothing else to the entire left side of his body - no-one ever seems to be checking for consistency. This only gets more confusing when it's been canonically acknowledged on a couple of occasions that at least some of his skin is synthetic, and merely hides the metal underneath. Cable's reply in this chapter to why he doesn't put the same synthetic skin over his metal arm in this chapter is mere fannish speculation - we all know the real reason is because a metal arm is far too fundamentally badass for any comic creator to pass up on. (Other picspam posts I might some day get around to putting together: the many and wildly different interpretations of Cable's/Stryfe's/Nate Grey's hair before it all went grey, the many and wildly different interpretations of Deadpool's hair before he lost it all, the top five artists who should never be allowed to draw Domino again.)
> 
> [As I've noted elsewhere](http://rallamajoop.livejournal.com/83688.html), the 'canonical' timeline regarding the Domino/Vanessa situation is such a contradictory mess that (unless you want to start constructing wild conspiracy theories whereby Tolliver is the kind of cackling evil overlord who really does need a five year old advisor to point out all the holes in his plans) having the excuse to throw it all in the blender in the name of writing an AU is a very good thing. But if anyone's actually wondering, in this 'verse, she probably joined X-Force at least a couple of months before Deadpool first showed up.
> 
> Cable having met (and repeatedly fought) Wolverine also comes straight from canon – very early canon, within a few issues of Cable's introduction. What better way to establish your new character as an utter, complete bastion of pure badassery than to have him not only know Wolverine, but have fought him to a standstill, just for the sheer hell of it, on multiple occasions? Liefeld was, in addition to being the 'artist', responsible for outlining the overall plots in those days. It explains a lot.


	4. Chapter 4

Domino had been in her quarters, shaking with fury. For the last hour.

Goddamn him and all his spawn to the umpteenth generation, what was Nate _thinking?_ Out of all his enemies, out of all Tolliver's associates, he'd hired _Deadpool?_ If this was all some elaborate ruse – some sort of 'to fool your enemies, first fool your friends' variety of self-referential non-logic – she was never going to forgive him. Even if she did get the chance.

What could Deadpool possibly have said that would make Nate trust him? It shouldn't matter one whit that Nate hadn't dealt with him before, he _had_ to be able to tell what kind of monster he was dealing with. Didn't he have the faintest idea what lengths Tolliver would go to get a loyal agent onto his team?

A squeak of hysterical laughter caught in her throat at that thought, making her cough and hiccup her way back to remembering how to breathe without swallowing her own tongue. She held her face in her hands and refused to let it turn into sobbing. Oh god, she was this close to losing it. Nate would probably say not even Tolliver would try something so obvious. He might even be more right than he knew. 

_Did_ he know? Did he suspect? Was all this Cable playing his games with everyone on both sides at once? She couldn't put it past him. You could know the man for years and still not hardly _know_ him. Trust Nate to make the one mistake that not even she could hope to protect him from. 

No matter how she turned it over in her head, it always came back to the same never-ending cycle of useless contradictions. She had to make him understand that he couldn't trust Deadpool, but how _could_ she without losing his trust herself? And if he didn't trust her, who would be left to protect him from this insane mistake he was making? Why would he even consider hiring Deadpool if not as a way to get to Tolliver, but if he knew the first thing about Tolliver, why would he _ever_ think this was a good idea? The last thing she could afford to do was nothing, but what was she supposed to _do?_

She told herself Domino would have known how to handle this, Domino would never have hesitated so long caught between a bad option and a worse one, that Domino would _never_ have spent an hour shaking hard enough to make her chair skitter over the floor, paralysed in indecision. Pacing had stopped it for a while; it felt almost productive for the first dozen laps of the room, but after that it quickly became pathetic. She couldn't think when she was this angry, but anger was the only refuge she had against dissolving into gibbering panic, and it was becoming less effective by the circuit. 

The inescapable truth was that she knew she was avoiding the one real option she had left, and it was getting harder not to think about it every time she came back to it. Call Tolliver; don't let anything on. Ask him what the hell he was playing at sending Deadpool in to mess with her job. Tell him Cable was suspicious, she couldn't take risks. Tell him she needed more time.

Domino would have done such a better job of this.

Domino would have known better than to get involved with the likes of Tolliver in the first place.

Holding the receiver tightly made it easier to keep her hands steady. Teeth gritted so they wouldn't chatter, she made herself dial the number correctly, first time.

On the second ring, a creaking floorboard in the hallway made her jump halfway out of her skin. She slammed the phone back on to the receiver, but took more care in walking softly to the door. She picked a number at random, counted to it, and wrenched the door open in one sudden movement. Deadpool had hardly begun to stumble through before she had him by the wrist, and then had it twisted behind him, shoving him to the floor with a knee in the middle of his back. 

"Hey, timeout, timeout! I never said 'go' yet!" Deadpool protested. With a note of grudging respect, he added, "How'd you _do_ that?"

"Just _lucky_ ," said Domino, twisting the arm further until he yelped and toned down the struggling. "Give me one reason why I shouldn't snap your neck."

"Hi, 'Nessa, nice to see you too, and I'll give you two: it won't take, _and_ you'll have to explain to Cable why his newest employee has a _broken neck_."

"Because I caught him trying to break down my door?" 

"I was gonna yell, 'surprise!' – why does no-one appreciate a good surprise anymore? Should warn ya, he might find it awfully convenient you found an excuse to break the neck of the guy who just told him all about how you're a spy."

"You told him _what?_ " She knew it! If Deadpool could get her out of the way, there'd be no-one between him and whatever Tolliver had sent him here for.

"Yeah, he wanted to have a think about how to deal with it or something, but he's bound to be on his way down any time now. Your word against mine, Nessie."

"Stop _calling_ me that!"

"I thought you liked 'Nessie'. It was 'Ashley' or 'Mary Kate' you always hated."

"Cut the crap, Deadpool-"

"I'm hurt, Nessie, you know you can call me Wade."

"This was Tolliver's idea, wasn't it? What's he playing at?"

"I dunno, seems like _someone_ was dragging her heels planting some bomb or other, ringing any bells? You know how Mr Tolliver gets when he's getting impatient..."

He didn't stop there, but far more important was the faint, metallic sound in the middle of 'impatient' that had nothing to do with Deadpool's voice, and that was just enough warning for her to pin Deadpool's free hand by the wrist before the dagger ended up in her leg. Unfortunately, the only warning she got that she'd lost her original grip on him in the process was Deadpool flipping her off his back as he rolled out from underneath. The dagger skittered out of his grasp, and she grabbed for it blind, got it by the handle as they were both finding their balance, and had it turned on him in the next breath.

"Lucky for me, huh?" said Deadpool, as he weaved away from the blade. "You realise Cable pays three times Tolliver's base salary? Not to mention the perks – you've got to ask about the _perks_. Hey, maybe you already have, he and the real Domino had some kinda thing going once, right?"

"I _am_ Domino!" she shrieked, stabbing wildly. Too slow to pull the blow when Deadpool dodged, the dagger wound up buried in the side of the table, and the second she wasted pulling it free was time for Deadpool to land a kick that threw her halfway across the room.

"Been telling yourself that in front of the mirror a lot, huh Nessa?" he said, advancing on her in no particular hurry. "Getting a bit caught up in the role? That why you never checked in? Y'know, Cable's got this whole package plan for folks like us who always wanted to switch sides but never knew how to start. 'Course, the whole lying to him thing probably would've put a bit of a crimp on that."

Domino drew herself into a crouch, still feeling the echo of the hard texture of the floor against her hip, the harder knowledge that _Domino_ would never have made a mistake like that. Probably wouldn't have had nearly as much trouble tuning out all the nonsense Deadpool kept spewing either. "Just like that you're on his side now? _You?_ "

Deadpool shrugged, and leaned out of the way of her next punch in the same movement. "Okay, so maybe I didn't wanna buy what he was selling right away, so much as I called him crazy mofo and nearly shot him in the kneecap, but that Nate-ster just _had_ to have me on his team." A returning punch stung against her arm as she blocked it. "Crazy, I know, but he thinks I've got it in me to hang with the heroic types, and what do I know, maybe he's right. But I did kill a perfectly innocent seagull while I was thinking it over if that makes you feel any better." She had to dive to get out of the way of his next blow, but at least she managed it with some grace, rolled on landing, and had the fallen dagger back in her hand by the time she was up again. She threw it without looking, trusting to luck it'd connect. Luck didn't fail her.

"Hey!" Deadpool protested, staring at the dagger sticking out of his side, which meant he was looking down, which meant he was completely off guard when she threw everything into a kick to his jaw. Deadpool went over backwards, hit the table on his way down and skidded across it into the wall behind. 

The dagger protruded awkwardly from his torso, buried almost to the hilt. Domino marched over, grabbed it and _pushed_ , and there was no 'almost' left.

"Cable might believe you," she hissed, holding the dagger in place as Deadpool twitched and gurgled – a flick of the wrist and she could twist it clean around its axis, could slice him open to the throat, "but he doesn't know you like I do, and I am _not_ letting you do this!"

"I think you've done enough," said a voice that did not belong to Deadpool.

Domino's first thought as her head whipped around to see the intimidating bulk of Cable's body standing in her doorway was how hadn't she seen him until now? How long had he been there?

The second was that never in their acquaintance had she ever seen him so furious.

* * *

Rage proved disappointingly ineffective at clouding Cable's view of the scene. Suspicions weren't proof, no matter how justified, but nor had they done much to soften the blow. 

For a long moment, there was nothing Cable would have liked more than to drag her bodily off Wade, slam her into the nearest hard surface and conduct the remainder of this with five metallic fingers wrapped around her throat; and it would have had little to do with the damage she'd done to Wade, little even to do with the real threat she posed his organisation, and _everything_ to do with the most personal betrayal he'd ever experienced. _Domino_ , of all people – whom he'd never thought twice about trusting with the young lives of his team, with all his doubts about their weaknesses, with all his plans. Whom he'd nearly invited back to his bed again on more than one occasion. 

On the scale of damning admissions of guilt, she'd hardly delivered the triumphant monologue of a supervillain, but neither had she left him in the mood to make much of what little doubt remained.

"Let him up," he ordered.

"Cable, he..." Anything he couldn't have guessed about the look on his face was right there, reflected in hers.

" _Let. Him. Up._ And then, why don't we have a little talk about just _how well_ you know Wade?"

Though she obeyed, movements sharp with her own reluctance, she wasn't giving up without a fight. "Nate, can't you see what he's doing? He's trying to turn us against each other!"

" _Answer the question_ , Domino – or whoever you are."

"Sorry Nate, she's really good at this," Deadpool put in, waving vaguely at them from the table. "That was the best I could get out of her. Bet I can tell you what number she was dialling before I came in but."

Cable watched 'Domino' grimace. "So I've met him before, is that any of your business? You don't know every job I've taken since Six Pack crashed and burned – you don't know half the creeps I've had to deal with."

"...I'm fine, by the way, just a flesh wound, thanks for caring..."

"You'll forgive me," said Cable, "for wondering why you didn't bring that up when you were trying to convince me of what a mistake I was making by hiring him."

"Have you considered that maybe it was a job I didn't want to talk about? You're allowed _your_ secrets." It was impressive, in a way that was very difficult to appreciate at the moment, how fast she'd returned to indignant fury; the fear that had been plain in her eyes when she saw him in the doorway was all but gone.

"This one matters. While you're at it, why don't you remind me, just how _did_ we meet Grizzly?"

"Grizzly?" That surprised her. "What does Grizzly have... Nate, you're still stuck on that thing with _Grizzly?_ This is about Deadpool, it's not about him!"

"You're right, Grizzly has nothing to do with this," Cable agreed. "I should never have brought him up from the start. Would you like to tell me why?"

Domino stared at him in furious silence, but behind the façade, Cable could hear her panicking the way Domino would never panic.

"Why don't you tell me, Nate?" she said.

"Is that how this is going to be?"

If silence had ever spoken volumes, hers may as well have been a signed confession, and that was when Cable realised that in every way that mattered, that was it, not a shred of doubt remaining. Everything from here could only be detail.

"Fine," he said, a sudden dryness to his throat. "We met Grizzly in a bar. He was out of work, and had had more to drink than he could handle. I stepped in when it became obvious that if I didn't, he was going to pick a fight with someone even less able to deal with him. The alcohol barely slowed him down; I had to knock him out with a psychic blow, and I spent the next twenty four hours with a worse headache than the one he woke up with. 

"Do I need to spell this out for you? He made a mistake, but he never meant to hurt anyone, least of all any of us. He couldn't believe we wanted to hire him after he sobered up. We never saw him that apologetic again – he wouldn't touch alcohol for months after. There's a world of difference between meeting someone during a drunken brawl and meeting them when they've been hired to bring back your head, and if you'd actually known what happened, you wouldn't have missed the chance to tell me that."

He could have left it there, but she'd paid his intelligence one more insult that day, and he wouldn't let her forget it. "You actually had me wondering what you meant when you said I'd changed. I should have realised it was the classic diversionary tactic – you knew you'd pushed the role too far, you had to make me think anything that felt wrong was _my_ fault. And you still haven't managed to come up with a convincing story for how you 'know' Deadpool."

She'd done a very good job with the indignation once she found her stride, but by the time Cable finished, it was all gone.

"This is the last chance I'm going to give you to come clean on your own terms," he pronounced, and within ten seconds, everything in her posture had drooped in surrender. It was some small relief to have no surprise left.

"My name is Vanessa Carlyle. Copycat. I'm supposed to get everything when I shift – looks, powers, even their memories," she admitted – Domino's face, Domino's voice, but not Domino's words. "I suppose sometimes I don't get all the details. I'm sorry," she said, and the worthless sincerity behind it made his jaw ache. "I never meant..."

"To deceive me?" 

"I didn't have a choice!" she protested, begging him to believe her. "I never wanted to hurt any of you! Jesus, Nate, why do you think I never planted the bomb?"

Why she imagined for one second that he cared about her excuses was the greater mystery. Later, maybe, when time had taken the edge of his anger, but for now it was all he could do to keep his response to a curt, "I don't think you have permission to call me that."

" _Cable_. I... I didn't have a choice. Tolliver was blackmailing me."

"Blackmailing you how?"

The woman who'd just introduced herself as 'Copycat' fell back into the tight-lipped silence that Cable was fast learning to loathe.

"Young mutants in this day and age haven't the best record for falling on their feet," he said, thinking aloud. "Their families reject them, society itself rejects them, leaving many with nothing but their own resources and resentment to fall back on. The ease of committing _fraud_ using a power like yours might become very tempting to a young woman in that situation. Am I on the right track?"

"It wasn't like that!" The protest was as good as a declaration of the opposite. "I tried to turn Tolliver down, but he set me up!"

"Don't you _dare_ ask me for sympathy!" Cable growled. "You had a thousand chances to come to me with this of your own volition, and _still_ you forced me to drag it from you every step of the way!"

She was trembling when he finished, the Domino persona all but vanished. If he hadn't seen first hand what an accomplished actress she could be, it might have been easier to feel sorry for her; though after all she'd done even that was doubtful. Righteous anger never mixed well with pity and disgust.

"What are you going to do to me?" she asked, finally out of excuses. 

"I haven't decided," he said. "But _you_ are going to start by dropping this façade. I'm not going to deal with you any longer while you're wearing her face!"

"...I can't," she said quietly.

" _Try harder_."

"You don't get it Na-Cable. I honestly _can't_ , it doesn't work that way. It's not that easy to control. I pick up bits of people on the street all the time without even wanting to, but I've never had to impersonate someone this long before – had to fool someone who was _telepathic_ – on top of everything else! I've spent every night and day since I got here dreading that I'd slip up. Every waking moment focusing on nothing but being _her!_ " 

Cable was unmoved. "Deadpool? You know... whoever you said she is, a lot better than I do."

Deadpool shrugged. "She could be telling the truth, boss. She always did have this problem with performance anxiety, came and went a lot."

Copycat glared at both of them. "For so long I was so scared you were already suspicious. I mean, I know you slept with the real Domino, but suddenly, you just weren't interested? By the time I was sure that..."

"Ooh, Natey, don't tell me that was when you had your big revelation about preferring steak to seafood, if you know what I mean." said Deadpool. 

"Wade," Cable warned.

"I'm just trying to break up the tension!" said Deadpool, with a lot of inappropriate hand gestures. "And by tension I _do_ mean the sexual kind. She wants you, you don't want her looking like the gal you used to want, and me I'm just generally easy. Nothing we couldn't resolve with a quick threesome..."

"Wade, you are _not_ helping," Cable snapped. " _Please_ be quiet." He turned back to the shapeshifter with what little patience he had left. "I _trusted_ you. I vouched for you to a team that trusted me! If you'd told me the truth I _would_ have helped you, but you wasted your chance, and that's the decision you have to live with. This conversation is _not_ over, but I don't care to hear any more of your issues or your excuses while the real Domino is in enemy hands. And for your own sake, you had better hope I find her alive!"

Copycat nodded, miserably. "I can tell you where she is. They took me down to see her after they brought her in; she wasn't conscious at the time..."

"The location will do fine, thank you," said Cable, shortly.

"She's in a tunnel under his villa, in Italy – Sardegna. I've only been there a few times, but I can probably show you the way if..."

Deadpool coughed loudly. Cable glanced in his direction.

"You have something to contribute?"

Deadpool shrugged. "You know I'm still on the fence on the whole thing with being unprofessional about my ex-boss, but if she's going to tell you anyway, I've got the coords programmed on the speed-dial on my teleport belt."

"Perfect," said Cable, and looked back to the shapeshifter. "I suggest you spend the time we're away thinking _very hard_ about losing that face."

"Cable," she said urgently as he turned away, "there's something else you should know. Tolliver didn't just want me to kill you, he wanted me to make sure you knew who it was who planted the bomb before it went off. He wanted you to think it was the real Domino who betrayed you. He wanted you to _hurt_. And he's kept her alive this long because he wanted her to _know_ how you died before he killed her too. Just... be careful."

"I don't need your concern," Cable told her, which had the benefit of being true, and reminded himself that her words weren't news, he knew the root of Tolliver's hatred too well. If it settled in his chest with all the ease of a leaden weight, well, it was in good company with the rest of the baggage of the day. 

And the day wasn't over yet. 

* * *

By the time they emerged from Domino's room, Cannonball, Sunspot, Rictor and Wolfsbane were congregated in the corridor outside, caught in the tail end of a debate about whether it was as bad as it sounded, and who was going to risk disturbing an angry Cable to find out. Cable strode into their midst pushing Copycat in front of him, rage not much abated, caring little for how much they had or hadn't heard.

"I want everyone ready to move within five minutes," he ordered. "We're taking the fight to Tolliver."

"Not bad," said Deadpool, peering over his shoulder. "Very dramatic. Good posing. Full-page spread material, hands down – inspirational stuff. _Might_ have wanted to lead with the 'and Domino's a clone-bot' bit though, for the readers picking up with this issue."

"Domino's what?" said Cannonball, eyeing Deadpool with suspicion. 

"Tolliver's own, personal femmebot-transformer-call girl! Whoa, okay, I just grossed _me_ out."

Sunspot looked from Cable to Deadpool to Domino and back again. "Wait a second here, we're not just taking his word for that?"

"I don't have to, she's confessed to everything," Cable explained. "The real Domino has been a prisoner of Tolliver since this impostor took her place, and I don't intend to leave her there one minute longer than I have to. Cannonball, Sunspot – find the others, bring them up to speed, and let them know they've got _four minutes_ left to get back here."

The boys nodded and ran off.

"Wolfsbane, I want you to stay here and watch _her_ ," said Cable, pointing at Copycat. "Full wolf form; you might have some senses she'll find harder to fool."

"You're leaving her here with some traitor alone?" Rictor protested.

"No, I'm leaving you with her," said Cable. "And I do mean, _watch her_. She claims she's stuck in this form, but she's a shapeshifter, and until you know her abilities _don't_ include shrinking her hands out of her restraints, you assume they do. Do _not_ take your eyes off her, do _not_ trust a word she says."

"Deadpool," he went on, holding out a hand, "I'm going to need to borrow that belt."

A raised eyebrow from Wade suggested, to Cable's eye, that he didn't see what was stopping Cable from coming on over and having a nice, close look at his belt while he was wearing it, but he unbuckled it and handed it over. "Don't wanna step on any toes while you're getting your leadership on over there, but is now a good time to ask a question?"

"Is it relevant?"

"Oh ye of little faith, I'll have you know I find that comment very offensive to the comically gifted and/or morally impaired. Seriously, Nate, do I have to join the party for this one? I know we talked about how I don't really wanna make a habit of dishing on my exes a couple of times already today, but if spilling the beans about 'Nessa was only stretching it a little, and showing you a few harmless numbers didn't count for much, then charging in all guns blazing – that might where people would draw the line..."

Cable hesitated. Having Wade on board would have been invaluable; he was the only man they had who'd ever seen the installation they were headed for, who had any idea what kind of resistance they could expect to face - and insofar as there'd ever been any justification behind his concerns that his inside knowledge was the only thing he was being hired for, it seemed rather late for him to remember it now. But if he was experiencing any conflict over his loyalties... "It's alright, Wade. We did talk about it, and you've more than earned your salary already today."

"Okay, cool," said Deadpool, though he looked a little conflicted as he accepted his belt back. "I'll just chill around here, watch some TV..." He trailed off, which twigged as odd behaviour for him even on such short acquaintance, but Siryn was flying down the hallway, the rest of the team close behind, and there were more immediate things to think about. 

"Cable!" Siryn cried, landing in front of him. "Is it true? Domino's really..."

"It's true," said a voice, and everyone was surprised to realise it had come from Copycat. "What?" she snapped at Cable. " _You_ know, _he_ knows," she twitched her head at Deadpool, "you've already told all of them, what's the point in hiding it now?"

There were exactly three seconds of stunned silence, before the corridor erupted with the noise of everyone deciding they had questions for her at once.

"Silence!" Cable yelled, above the din. "There will be a time for explanations, and that time is _after_ we get back. Listen carefully, I'm only going to lay this out once: the real Domino is being held in a tunnel underneath one of Tolliver's Italian properties. He doesn't know we're coming, but we _will_ meet resistance. They have a hostage and I'm not going to tolerate any mistakes. No-one breathes without my orders until we find her, and once we do, our only priority is getting everyone out. If we do meet Tolliver himself, you're to leave him to me. Understood?"

Among the chorus of variants on 'yessir!', one nervous voice (Sunspot again) said, "You did just say _Italy?_ "

"I did."

"But how are we getting there? It's got to be hours away, even in the Blackbird."

"Then it's a good thing we're not taking the Blackbird," said Cable, and flicked open the communicator in his wrist. "Professor, Bodyslide by six." 

Their arrival on the other side was marked by someone shrieking. Fortunately, it wasn't Siryn. 

"Holy... molian _fishsticks_ , Cable!" said Boomer, apparently not done shrieking. "Was that you? You did that, and don't try and deny it! _Warn_ a girl, next time, _Jesus!_ "

"Quiet your nonsense," said Shatterstar, angrily. "One would think you'd never been through a teleport device before."

"Again with the _warn a girl_ part, Goldilocks!"

"Cable?" called Cannonball, taking in his surroundings – the clutter of interlocking metallic panels and bare circuitry covering the walls on both sides of the corridor – with a little more grace, "Where are we?"

"Welcome to Greymalkin, Sam," said Cable. 

"That ought to be my line," said the voice of the Professor. "And to yourself, Nathan, welcome back."

"My pleasure, Professor. Perhaps you'd like to answer Cannonball's other question."

"Of course. Samuel Guthrie, you currently orbiting the planet Earth at an altitude of approximately thirty-six thousand kilometres, aboard the space station Greymalkin, activated on ..."

"I'm sure they have the idea, Professor," said Cable. "What you need to know is that Greymalkin is fitted with a long-distance teleportation matrix which I can activate by voice command. As soon as I've input the coordinates of Tolliver's base, it can take us there. Professor?" Cable read aloud the string of numbers he'd copied from Deadpool's belt.

"Input and confirmed. Targeting now," said the Professor.

"Intercom links in the armoury still functioning?" There had been no opportunity to arm himself before they left home, but nor had there been the need – and nor was there any need to wait in once place once the Professor finished. 

"As always, Nathan." 

"Good," said Cable, and set off down the corridor, X-Force trailing wide-eyed behind him. 

"You have access to a _satellite?_ " said Sam.

"Not access. I _have_ a satellite."

"A crude way to phrase it, but broadly correct," the Professor agreed.

"You didn't think to maybe, I dunno, mention this before?" asked Sam, incredulous.

"Need to know basis, Sam. The fewer who know about Greymalkin, the less the risk to me." Reaching the door to the armoury, Cable keyed in the unlock code and waited as it rolled ponderously upwards. "I include in that the risk certain authorities will learn the existence of an unregistered space station floating over their heads, the risk of hostile parties learning I can transport to any part of the planet at will, and the risk that I or any of you come to rely on it more than is wise."

"Geez," said Sam, on his first sight of the long racks of (to his view) futuristic guns and ammunition which lined all four walls of the armoury. " _Now_ I believe this place belongs to you." 

"At the 'risk' of sounding paranoid," said Siryn, "this isn't leading into you wiping all our minds on the way out or something, is it?"

"Not at all, Theresa," said Cable, making his selections. "I simply judged that the value of getting us all to Italy with speed was more than worth the minor cost of revealing Greymalkin to all of you. I knew the time for that was coming, it has simply come a little sooner than expected."

"I have a lock on the coordinates you specified, Nathan," said the Professor. 

"Excellent, Professor. What can you tell us about them?"

"The location fits the description of a private, high-end villa of medium sized, distinguished from its neighbours by the presence of a helipad on the southern roof and high security fencing surrounding the perimeter."

"Domino should be in a tunnel underneath."

"There is indeed a network of old tunnels running partially beneath the villa."

"Can you get a lock on any signs of life inside?" Cable asked.

"Negative, interference from a combination of the ground covering and an unidentified electromagnetic source prevents me. However, I have located an outlet on the seaward side which could be used to gain access."

"We'll take it. Put us down there on my mark." 

"As you say, Nathan."

"Anyone else missing that time Magneto was in charge about now?" muttered Boomer, behind him.

"Boomer, you shouldn't say that," said Sam.

"Then how about I just think it real loud and hope he doesn't hear?"

Cable ignored them. "Last warning," he called to the team. "From here on, it's for real."

Sam hesitated a moment, then said, "I hate to bring this up, but anyone could tell you you're taking this really personal and this could be the last chance I'll get..."

"Make it quick, Sam."

"Are you _sure_ Tolliver doesn't know we're coming? Domino and Deadpool were both working for him, but neither of them came along... how do we know we're not walking into a trap?"

"We don't," said Cable. "And you're not wrong, I am taking this personally. It could be affecting my judgement. But the only reason any of us are alive now could be because Tolliver's shapeshifter lost her nerve. If I have to deal with any more of his traps, I'll take them head on, expecting the worse. I ask you all again, are you ready?"

The team exchanged glances one last time. "Ready as we'll ever be, Cable," said Cannonball.

"Good. Professor? Mark."

* * *

No-one screamed on the second teleport, Sardegna greeting them with the fading light of sunset. The 'entrance' was no more than an outlet pipe for an old drainage system, and whether or not it was officially still functioning in capacity, it had continued to drain without obstruction. The water pouring from it into the ocean smelt unpleasantly organic and wasn't quite knee-deep, but the rocks outside were slippery with algae and slime, the tunnel itself not much better, and it was plain they were all going to be thoroughly damp by the time they made it inside. 

Cable led the way. Sound echoed inside the tunnel (the smell too, if that was possible) in a manner that it took a few moments to adjust to, but after those few moments had passed he hadn't shaken the idea that there was _something_ in the gloom ahead, splashing around the way running water shouldn't. He held a hand up to silence the team behind him, raised his gun and inched forward as quietly as he could, hugging the side of the tunnel. He hadn't been mistaken – whatever was he could hear splashing around was _muttering_ to itself. 

"Whoa!" said a figure emerging from the gloom, with a voice Cable would have recognised anywhere. "Is that you, Nate? So I just lost about a year off my life, how're you?"

"Deadpool." Cable didn't immediately lower his gun, but internally he relaxed. "We weren't expecting to see you here."

Deadpool shrugged sheepishly. "Well, I had the address and the invite and my own ride, and then I remembered there's never anything on TV on Wednesday nights anymore, so I thought, what the hell. You know?"

After the events of the last hour it was strange to feel himself smile, here of all places. Cable thumbed behind him, to where the rest of X-Force were waiting. "Join the party."

"Awesome. You guys leave me any cake?"

"We hadn't even started yet."

Having Deadpool along for this might not negate any of Sam's concerns about the risk that they were walking into a trap, but Cable would be glad for it without reservation. Almost hard to believe it had been barely a couple of hours ago that it had taken so much effort to make Wade admit he might want to take the job at all.

It had been a long day – but it was going to be a lot longer before it was over.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As a lot of other members of Cable's team are getting bit parts in this chapter and not everyone's going to recognise all the names, I threw together a [quick pictorial guide](http://rallamajoop.livejournal.com/121432.html) to who's who.

To the general relief of Cable's team, edging along in single file with water up to their knees, the old sewer pipe took them only a short way into the hill before they reached a side passage – a proper tunnel this time, lined with ugly brown brick but certainly not built for waste water disposal. The new passage led them up a steep incline that quickly rose well above water level. Cable guessed it might have been built for smuggling – possibly well before Tolliver's time – but anyone in that line of business would have ample incentive to keep it intact in case they someday needed to make an emergency exit.  
  
It was difficult to judge how far they'd come so deep underground, but they had to be getting close. There'd been no sign of any guards just yet, but from here they'd have to tread carefully.  
  
"Deadpool?" Cable called, keeping his voice low. "How much can you tell me about what kind of resistance we'll meet down here?"  
  
"Uh... I haven't exactly been down here before..." From the uncertainty in his voice, he was likely about to go on yet another of his spiels about his conflicted loyalties.  
  
"Deadpool, I've been very patient with you so far, but at this point I need you here with me a hundred percent, or I need you to get out of the way," said Cable, impatiently.  
  
"Well, if you put it that way," Deadpool actually sounded relieved to have the choice taken out of his hands, "I _haven't_ been down here before, but the guys who _have_ talked about it during company tea-breaks, y'know? Most of them wish the boss would just fridge the bitch already (no offence), 'cause they've been having hell keeping her locked up. _Everything_ goes wrong down here – rusty locks, guards falling asleep, computers blue screening like it's going out of style, prisoners just _happening_ to spring their handcuffs by banging them on the wall or flicking rocks across the room and just _happening_ to hit the right key on the security system. She gets _this close_ to making it out every other week or so."  
  
A smile quirked its way across Cable's lips. "That sounds like Domino."  
  
"So what I'm saying is they turned this place into the highest security lock-up Tolliver's got. Lots of guards, lots of rules, they don't leave _nothing_ to chance anymore."  
  
"Figures," grumbled Boomer. "We're supposed to just walk in and pull her out of all that?"  
  
"Lot of security for one prisoner," said Cannonball.  
  
"At least we know – we can go in expecting strong resistance," said Cable. "They'll be better prepared for keeping her in than keeping us out; if we're lucky, that might work for us. We should be getting close, I'm going to see if I can contact her." He tapped the side of his head to indicate to the others what he'd meant, then shut his eyes and concentrated on reaching out telepathically.  
  
 _"Dom?"_  
  
He'd never had the power to be a very good telepath; ordinarily, something like this – finding someone blind in unfamiliar territory – would have been beyond him, but Domino was someone he knew, better than perhaps anyone else in this century – someone accustomed to hearing his voice in her head. If there was anyone in the world he could have contacted down here, Domino was it.  
  
 _"Dom, can you hear me?"_  
  
At first, there was nothing but the echo of his own mental voice coming back to him, then suddenly-  
  
 _"Cable!"_ First contact was so loud it hurt, like a camera flash after hours of darkness; the relief in her mind alone almost floored him. _All the months she'd been here, all those times her luck had failed before she made it out; never knowing if today was going to be the day that bastard Tolliver came down to tell her his plan had worked... of course she'd known it would take more than a grub like him to take Cable down so easily but when you'd been stuck down here this long you'd believe_ anything... _"Mother of_ God, _Nate, what took you so long?"_  
  
By the time he was done wincing, she was back in control, and he'd gotten his mental 'volume' wound down to a more practical level. _"I'll tell you all about it later",_ he promised her. _"Dom, I need to borrow your eyes. Where are you?"_  
  
 _"My eyes aren't going be much good to you, Nate, they've got me behind a sheet of one-way glass."_ _  
  
 _"Not taking any chances, are they?"_  
  
 _"They learned the hard way."__ Domino radiated a certain amount of vicious satisfaction. _"They only installed the glass a couple of weeks ago. I can picture the view from before that."_ _  
  
 _"Please."__  
  
Cable caught a flicker of an image of a room, a little wider than the tunnel he was standing in, the far wall lined with computer equipment. Vertical bars obscured the view every couple of inches.  
  
 _"Got it. That's the view from your cell? What about the inside?"_ _  
  
 _"Not good. I'm in restraints behind double cell doors, and it's hardwired so they can only unlock one at a time."_  
  
 _"Good thing I wasn't planning on wasting time with locks."_  
  
 _"Cable, you can't just go blowing them down. My cell's barely six foot square and I can't move!"__  
  
Cable wondered if he was that predicable. Probably true. _"We won't need explosives, one of my people has superstrength. Speaking of which, are you in a position to cover your ears?"_ _  
  
 _"My ears? The way they've got me chained up I can't even scratch my nose. Why?"_  
  
 _"Another of my people uses sonics."__  
  
Curiosity about these new 'people' filtered through the mental link, but she didn't bother to voice it with so many more pressing priorities on the table. _"Then I can do much better than covering my ears. The glass is also soundproof. The less I know about what's going on outside, the less trouble I can be – so they think."_ _  
  
 _"How wrong they were. What about guards?"_  
  
 _"Last I could see them there were at least four at all times: two humans, the others were some kind of robots."__  
  
The security on this one cell was getting ridiculous, especially for a prisoner whom Tolliver ought to have little reason to need alive. Perhaps finding a way to keep her contained had become a matter of pride.  
  
 _"How far away are you?"_ Domino asked.  
  
 _"Not sure. We're coming up an old drainage tunnel."_ _  
  
 _"I know the one, last time I got out I made it halfway down before they caught me. You'll come out behind a reinforced steel door. Feel free to go to town on that one, I'm nowhere near it."_  
  
 _"Any danger they'll hear us coming?"_  
  
 _"Not likely, but I can offer you a distraction to make sure. One of my restraints has been loose all day. It's not enough to get me out, but it'll get me their attention."_  
  
 _"Perfect. I'll see you soon."__  
  
His head swam when he opened his eyes – the mental equivalent of muscle strain, with a side order of something very like motion sickness and the buzzing of the TO virus in his head, but what he'd learned had been worth it twice over.  
  
"She's in a cell with double security doors behind one-way, soundproofed glass," he told X-Force. "Expect at least four guards, two human, the others robotic – and we don't know what kind of robotic, so assume the worst."  
  
"If I may offer one bitsy little correction," chirped Deadpool, "you don't know what kind – _unless_ you happen to have the exclusive beta-tester of said robots right here on your team. Would you like three guesses who, or would you like to use a lifeline?"  
  
"Deadpool?" Loyalties seemed to be giving him no further conflicts.  
  
" _Dingdingding_ , and our main contestant got it in one! He'll be taking home a matching set of bleeding-edge AIM technology, acquired by the Mr Tolliver himself by very nearly legitimate means. Standing six-feet-five and sporting a very fashionable silver chrome finish, these babies come custom fitted with electric whips, shoulder mounted laser canons and the very latest in personal forcefield technology! (Forcefields may occasionally malfunction without warning, warranty may be voided in places where robots were 'acquired' after getting mysteriously lost in the post.)"  
  
"Can you ever just answer a question?" Siryn complained.  
  
"Hey, one of your ex-X-ers already turned out to be an evil duplicate today, is now really the time for me to be giving you any reason to doubt I'm the real McCoy?"  
  
"Can you actually tell us _how_ to get those forcefields to malfunction?" asked Cable.  
  
"Well, I don't want to make this too technical for these plebes to handle, but in my expert opinion based on whole _minutes_ of research, punching them a whole lot seems to do the job."  
  
"Good. Then I'll expect to see you putting that expert experience to use." said Cable  
  
"Aw shucks, now I'm going to be so embarrassed if it doesn't happen on the night."  
  
Cable turned back to the others. "Sunspot, your only priority is getting Domino out. Siryn, I want you to take point when we get close – do as much damage as you can with one scream before we charge. After that, you cover Sunspot while he works. The rest of us will deal with the guards. It's going to be close quarters, so watch yourselves. We leave the same way we came, and we'll port home as soon as we're done." He hefted his gun and surveyed his troops. "Everyone clear?"  
  
Half of them looked like they were still digesting the understanding that Domino was actually down here and a loony in a red and black bodysuit really had lead them this far, but there were no objections.  
  
"Good. Now _move_."  
  
The door Domino had promised turned up another fifty feet further down the passage. One shell took it clean off its hinges. He had to take both hands off his gun to cover his ears while Siryn screamed, then take another second to orient himself through the dissonance between the room from Domino's memory versus the real thing from a different angle, and then there was nothing but the charge.  
  
A robot fitting Deadpool's description met him not three paces from the entrance, humanoid in form but built all out of square metal edges and rotating joints, no expense wasted on aesthetics. Its forcefield soaked up Cable's first three shots in a crackle of pink sparks, then a high-pitched whine from the guns on its shoulders was warning him to duck before the lasers fired. It was always going to be a mistake to assume that good intel and time to plan was enough to declare the battle won before it started, but if tech this slow was the worst they'd have to face then their odds looked more than comfortable.  
  
Details flashed through the edges of his vision; one guard out cold with blood streaming from his ears, another – a mutant? – who barely kept his feet long enough to give Shatterstar a light workout. Sunspot wrenching a cell door out of its frame, Domino, looking every bit as battered, torn and defiant as she'd sounded in his head, yelling a warning and wrenching her free arm across her body just in time to avoid a stray laser beam. He saw Cannonball drive one robot clean across the room and into the far wall, Deadpool scaling another from behind like a tree, Boomer dodging under the whip from a _third_...  
  
When the robot count reached five he was well past the conclusion that Domino's estimate had been off, and starting to wonder (in between reloading while rolling out of the way of a wild laser and slamming his gun right up against Number Five's forcefield and holding down the trigger until the field spluttered out and the robot danced in time with the automatic fire) whether how _much_ she'd been off by was something he had time to be worried about, when Number Five shook itself apart and Cable got a look at what was coming up behind it.  
  
Down the staircase at the far end of the corridor marched four new robots, two by two. But what stopped him in his tracks had little to do with four new opponents when it had taken all their efforts to hold off the first five, and everything to do with the figure standing in their midst, grinning at them all from beneath the shadow of his wide-brimmed hat. It was a grin that only widened as he met Cable's gaze and saw the recognition staring back.  
  
" _Tolliver!_ "  
  
He'd allowed for this, he'd given his team instructions for this exact eventuality, but there'd been too many other concerns and no _time_ , so it was only now that it struck him how impossibly far from ready for this he was.  
  
"Surprised, Nathan?" Tolliver's voice was low and mocking, and the sound of it hit Cable like a punch to the gut. "You didn't think I'd let you this far into my domain without offering you a proper welcome?"  
  
"Whoa, _Boss_ , is that you?" That came from Deadpool. "What a coincidence, I mean what are the odds I was gonna meet you here, down in your very own dungeon of your very own villa? Uh. You know, I must've rehearsed this conversation a dozen times, but somehow I never allowed for the possibility I was gonna be fighting a big robot when we had it... Soooo, you wanna play 'guess what the going market rate is for a mercenary of my calibre'? Uh-huh, I thought so too, but as it turns out-"  
  
"Deadpool, you are going to _regret_ choosing to side with the likes of him against me," Tolliver promised.  
  
"Wait, you already knew? Well now I feel all dumb about trying so hard to break it to you gently, your _coatiness_. I always meant to ask, was it all about your childhood crush on Dick Tracy, or do you just have a secret affection for the middle-aged-flasher-lurking-in-the-bushes-behind-the-kiddies-playground look? But let's be fair, you _do_ make up for it with your breathtaking command of supervillain dialogue – don't be shy, Mr Tolliver, tell the audience just how hard it is for you not to end every line with ' _I'll get you next time, Captain Planet!'_ "  
  
 _Hidden cameras_ , Cable thought as the next robot came at him. He'd been so proud of his clever work contacting Domino from inside that tunnel he hadn't even _thought_.  
  
"I will make you _feel_ every word you uttered here today, Wilson!"  
  
"Oooh, guys, you hear that? He used my _real name_ , I musta really hit a nerve!" The end of this was punctuated as the head of robot Deadpool had been fighting exploded. "Aw, did I do that? Remind me, ex-boss, _how_ much money did each of these babies set you back? Are we talking six figures? Seven? Or was it more one of those things where you offer the truck driver a handjob behind the cabin while... hey – _hey!_ I'll have you know it's unbelievably rude to run off when someone's in the middle of quipping at you!"  
  
Robot Seven was in Cable's way; the fraction of a second it would take to look away and confirm Deadpool's words would be a fraction too long, but on the edge of his hearing he could almost convince himself he could hear the sound of heavy boots retreating away upstairs.  
  
"Deadpool!" he yelled.  
  
"You raaaaang?" A red-booted foot came flying through Cable's peripheral vision right and connected with Robot Seven's head, knocking it to the floor. Deadpool landed and reached for his guns.  
  
"You think I laid it on a little thick back there?" he threw over his shoulder. "I don't wanna burn all my bridges in the professional community too soon – nothing personal there, but you gotta realise we're at about the business equivalent of a second date right now – and boy do you ever know how to show a girl a good second date, but it's still only-"  
  
"Take over," Cable snapped. "I'm going after Tolliver."  
  
"You got it Bo... Boss, _Boss_ , did you just leave _me_ in charge?"  
  
Cable was too close to being out of earshot to bother with a reply.  


* * *

  
The next basement up was a storeroom, lined with stacks of crates reaching up to the ceiling. Smuggling from this villa had only stepped up in scale since the days when the sea tunnel had been built. Light came from a few weakly-glowing bulbs hung around the edges of the room, interrupting the gloom and casting long shadows down the stacks. A thin line of light knifed along the roof, marking out the edges of a trapdoor-like opening, probably designed to allow cargo to be winched in and out from above, and hinting at brighter lights above. Tolliver's footsteps echoed loudly up ahead, making it difficult for Cable to judge how large his lead was.  
  
"Tolliver!" Cable roared. There was no response. He couldn't take the deep breath he wanted, not while he was moving, and the name nearly caught in his throat. " _Tyler_ _!_ "  
  
Under the fading echo of his own voice, Cable heard Tolliver's footsteps come to a stop, then the slow sound of laughter echoing back to him; the tone of it different without the low, deliberate hiss Tolliver injected into his speech. It sounded older than he remembered it, but still too familiar for comfort. It wasn't until the long moment of silence that followed, and with it the fact that he could no longer hear his own footsteps, that Cable realised he'd let himself freeze where he stood.  
  
"Well, _that_ I never counted on," said Tyler, his voice impossible to pinpoint. "When did you figure it out?"  
  
"Just now." However many months it had been since he'd come by that knowledge, knowing and _knowing_ were irreconcilably different things.  
  
"Hm. This would be my opening to ask what gave me away, but now that you know..." He gave a low chuckle. "What does that feel like, hm? How many years has it been for you, since you thought you'd put me out of my misery – and here I am, back to haunt you."  
  
Cable had no plan for this, nothing but the gut feeling he had to keep Tyler talking as long as he could. "Tyler, if you think I have it in me to be angry with you for what you've become, when I never even knew you were alive..."  
  
" _The only shame_ of this," the interruption carried something sharp and brittle pushing its way into the edge of his voice, "is that I won't be there to see Domino's face when you tell her it was your own flesh and blood who held her prisoner down there – for all those months while you never even knew. Did you enjoy your time with my shapeshifter while she was gone? She was a whore long before I talked her into trying a more... lucrative line of work. I never did get to tell either of them what became of the _last_ woman you convinced you cared for."  
  
Words aimed to hurt, too obvious to have much bite, but they did serve to remind Cable he was having this conversation standing in the middle of the hall and spur him to dodge around the side of the nearest stack and press his back flat against the side of a crate. He couldn't afford to assume that just because he couldn't see Tyler the reverse was the same, that he'd honour any level of truce for long. "If your purpose has always been revenge, Tyler, I'm surprised you didn't want me to know. Unless... unless it was easier for you to pretend-"  
  
"Pretend this was never more than an old business matter gone bad? Haven't you followed Tolliver's reputation? He's killed men for less."  
  
"Pretend you were never my son."  
  
This time, the laugh from Tyler sounded more forced than natural. "Oh go on, _Dad_ – sing me the song about how this isn't me. Let's hear how everything I've done to you is nothing more than Stryfe's doing. He lost his hold on me years ago. He's next on my list, once I'm done with you."  
  
Cable swallowed, tightening his already white-knuckled grip on his gun. "You won't listen to reason, Tyler, but if I have to use force to take you down-" It was definitely the wrong thing to say.  
  
" _It won't be the first time_ , will it, _Dad?_ I was your _son_ , you bastard son of a machine, and did you even hesitate when you took that shot? But since we're talking, why don't you tell me all about how the choice was taken from you; how it was the lesser of two evils to sacrifice _your own child!_ It's been a long time for me too, why don't you refresh my memory of my inspiration for everything I'm going to do to you."  
  
"Tyler..." To hear his son's voice fly so suddenly and completely into rage made something knot in Cables chest, driving home the stakes like nothing before it.  
  
Some of his control was back when Tyler spoke next. "You'll want to be careful in here, though. You've got no idea what kind of incendiaries I might be storing in these crates."  
  
Cable cursed and flicked the safety back on his gun. Tyler might be bluffing but arms dealing was Tolliver's trade – there _could_ be anything in these crates. He could win at hand to hand, but he'd have to get close, and Tyler might not let him. Even as he'd built himself a persona who could hide behind assassins and robotic guardsmen, he was bound to be armed and there'd been something in his voice that made Cable fear he might not hesitate to bring the sky down on his own head as long as he knew he'd been taking his father with him.  
  
He reached out with his telepathy again, trying to locate the other mind in this basement, only to be hit by the psychic equivalent of a thousand-decibel scream. Already worn down from his over-long conversation with Domino, for an infinite moment Cable didn't know which way was up, points of light exploding behind his eyelids.  
  
He should have known better. He'd taught Tyler that one too.  
  
"Always so damned predictable," Tyler spat.  
  
Cable wasn't so deafened that he didn't notice that the voice was louder than the echo all of a sudden. He turned to face it – too slow, saw the silhouette of Tyler's body, arm raised to shoot. He was still dressed in Tolliver's coat, his face in shadow, but his hat was gone and the angle of the light was high enough to catch the blond of Tyler's hair.  
  
"Send Vanessa my regards."  
  
The shot didn't hit him; it impacted into the side of a crate not five feet away, and under the roar of the explosion he had just the chance to reflect that on this account at least, Tyler hadn't been lying.  
  
He was long gone by the time Cable was able to pull himself together and stagger his way to the far staircase that lead to the villa above. All that remained for him to find was the noise of a helicopter retreating away into the distance.  


* * *

  
He found his team coming the other way up the lower stairs, and they met his reappearance with a chorus of startled gasps. Domino was in the lead, leaner than he remembered her, the skin around her right eye blackening in crude mockery of her left, but still as fierce and grimly beautiful as he'd ever seen her.  
  
"Tolliver?" she demanded.  
  
"Gone." Cable couldn't muster the energy to go into more detail. The still smouldering corners of the storage basement would stand as proof he hadn't let Tolliver go without a fight.  
  
Domino took it as well as anyone could have. "Next time you catch up to him, Nate, you'd better save a piece for me, and I don't mean leftovers. I have _four months_ in that fucking cell to take out of his flesh."  
  
"I've no doubt he knows it," Cable managed, but it was hard to meet her eye, his gaze drifting instead to what he recognised as one of Deadpool's guns slung over her shoulder.  
  
"I told her how you left me in charge but, _oh no_ , she just had to be the one calling the shots," Deadpool grumbled, then did a double-take as he got his first look at Cable. "Uh, boss? Don't look now, but you're kinda... peeling."  
  
"It looks worse than it is," said Cable, who hadn't really any idea how bad it looked, though he was probably missing most of the synth-skin on the left side of his face and both eyebrows at the very least. "Everyone accounted for?"  
  
The chorus of affirmatives were hardly done before Cable was calling the Professor for a bodyslide home.

* * *

  
If there ought to have been any relief in making it back home without casualties he was too numb to enjoy it. In the wake of everything that had happened in Sardegna the simple familiarity of it all felt like more than he could trust. Hard to believe that only hours ago he'd fully expected his confrontation with Deadpool in the library to be the worst he'd have to deal with that day. It felt like days since he'd last slept.  
  
It might still be hours yet before he could tear himself away, with everything left to be put to bed on all these loose ends that had come unravelled. He was sure he used to be much better than this at compartmentalising what he couldn't afford to deal with, but the ability seemed to have deserted him just when he needed it. Maybe some of Tyler's barbs had sunk deeper than he'd realised.  
  
It took him several long seconds to put it together in his head that what Domino had just said was, "Where are we?"  
  
"Basement level under what used to be the X-Mansion," he explained, shaking himself. "Home base – for the time being."  
  
Domino did not waste time on asking for the tour. "So when do I get to see this metamorph who's so good she had even you fooled?"  
  
Some nagging instinct, still on edge after the earlier revelations of the day, took that moment to warn Cable that he hadn't yet told her anything about Copycat. The more rational portion of his thoughts pointed out that even if Tolliver hadn't told her exactly what his plan entailed himself, she'd had several minutes down below with Cable's team while he was chasing Tolliver, and the subject was bound to have come up.  
  
He started to answer, but was cut off by Rictor's voice calling, "Cable!" from up the corridor. Cable turned just in time to see him falter at the sight of them.  
  
"What is it, Rictor?" he said, shutting down all inquiries about his condition before they started.  
  
"Cable, it's Vanessa – the shapeshifter. You've got to come see this."  
  
He didn't look panicked and he hadn't been running, but Cable – beyond any hope of guessing what Rictor might have meant – hurried after him, Domino on his heels.  
  
They'd put Copycat in the Danger Room, a steel cage just large enough for her to sit down in and a single wooden chair standing in front of it the only points of departure from the bare-metal finish of the room while inactive. Wolfsbane stood on all fours on the far side, giving herself a view of cage, prisoner and exit in one line. Vanessa's eyes barely flickered upwards as Cable came in.  
  
"You did tell me to think hard about it," she said, in a voice so quiet it was hard to say if she'd wanted it heard. "I guess I came back to me." She had pale blue skin in her true form, a shock of white hair and inhuman red and black eyes, and little if any of Domino's spirit left.  
  
It was all rather anti-climatic, really. Domino looked even less impressed.  
  
"That's it?" she said, and if she sounded more incredulous than furious, Cable didn't trust it to last. "Four months you spend wearing my face and-"  
  
"Dom, _wait_ ," Cable grabbed her by the shoulder before she could take another step towards Copycat. She didn't shrug him off, but the tension he could feel under her skin spoke very clearly of just how close it was. "You are _not_ going to fix this by taking what Tolliver did to you out on her."  
  
It took the space of a breath for her to turn all that anger onto him, but he met her gaze without flinching.  
  
"Does this look like the time for a lecture on revenge?" she demanded.  
  
"She's not going anywhere," said Cable. "Give yourself the night at least; we'll deal with her in the morning."  
  
Domino glared at him for another few seconds of furious silence before turning on her heel and marching back out of the room. It was probably easier to blame him for making her back down than to argue a point she wasn't going to win. He didn't resent her for it.  
  
He spared another glance at Copycat, who had lapsed back into silence, face drawn in the look of someone trying not to cry and knees curled tight up against her chest. After a minute it seemed to dawn on her he wasn't going anywhere.  
  
"I'd thank you," she said, bitterly, "but it would have been kinder to let her get it over with."  
  
"What part of this would that get us 'over with'?" Cable did not bother to temper his tone. "Yours? Hers? You've known me long enough to know I don't let my soldiers make mistakes in anger."  
  
"Don't you?" Copycat bit back, and that was almost enough to make him change his mind about whether Dom would have been making a mistake at all.  
  
" _Don't_ confuse Tolliver's methods with mine."  
  
"If I believed you were anything like Tolliver I'd have set that bomb months ago and gone right on sleeping like a baby every night," said Copycat; it wasn't close to being an apology. "But if I hadn't been so damned _scared_ of you... god, do you think it would have been _easy_ for me to come to you with the truth?"  
  
A sharp reminder of how little right she had to make any of this _his_ fault was on the tip of his tongue before the hypocrisy of it caught up with him, and afterwards it was too late for any other comeback to be very effective. Mother Askani, he was far too tired to be having this conversation.  
  
"I sent her away because _I_ have had too long a day to trust myself to rein her in, and because even if she doesn't hate you any less tomorrow morning, she'll have had time to think about whether she'd regret taking it out of your flesh. If you're very lucky, by morning I might have _almost_ forgotten how close I came to losing her," Cable told her instead. "Get some rest."  
  
He was halfway to the door when he heard Copycat call out, "Cable, did you... is Tolliver...?"  
  
"He got away." Under the circumstances it would be kinder not to share Tyler's parting words.  
  
Over his shoulder he saw Copycat lower her head and curl her hands tighter around her knees. "I am glad she's alive, you know," she said after a second, even softer, and that, at last, sounded something like an apology.  
  
"I hope you still feel that way tomorrow," Cable replied, and left.

 


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Given that this part wound up as around 7000 words of two peripheral characters working through their issues (and on a reread, could maybe have benefited from a little trimming down anyway), I seriously considered posting it as an interlude or side story rather than a proper chapter. But since it does have a scene with Deadpool and a lot of discussion of the potholes one tends to hit trying to make a relationship with Cable actually _work_ , I opted to leave it in. 
> 
> That said, if anyone wants to skim this chapter and go straight to the next one I would absolutely not hold it against you – most of the salient points will be summed up at the start of chapter 7 anyway.

Cable had left the shapeshifter in the simulation room, guarded by security protocols locked to ignore commands issued from within, no matter whose voice or whose finger-tips might enter them. Unfortunately, even from the outside the door wanted a passcode before it would open, and after five tries even Domino had to grind her teeth and admit that luck wasn't with her today. Time for a different strategy.  
  
A hallway away she found the mercenary with the red and black costume loitering in the corridor. Given a choice he wouldn't have been her first—for all she knew he'd only been hired for this one job and was just waiting around for someone to show up to hand over his pay so he could get out of here—but she didn't have the time to waste being picky, and if he might suffer less from conflicts of loyalty than the kids would, it was a chance worth taking  
  
"Deadpool, right?" she called to him.  
  
"In the spandex," said the mercenary. "What can I do you for?" On her first impression he'd struck her as the expressive type, but today there might as well have been a mannequin under that mask for all she could make of him; the way he stared at her made her wish, for perhaps the first time in her life, that she had Cable's talent for reading people.  
  
"I need the code for the simulation room," she told him, throwing out everything but the direct route.  
  
"Why don'tcha ask Cable?"  
  
"He's not up yet."  
  
Deadpool gave her a long, silent look, and—mask or not—Domino's stubborn hope that he might not treat that excuse with all that skepticism it deserved spluttered out under the glare. It was either that or he knew enough about her history with Cable to be making assumptions about _how_ she knew he wasn't up yet. She'd have preferred the latter, really.  
  
"You got something to say to Nessa that can't wait until she's had her cornflakes?" asked Deadpool, after only slightly to long.  
  
The nickname made her pause. "Nessa?"  
  
Deadpool shrugged. "Me and Nessa had a thing back in the day. I'd break out the projector and tell you the whole sordid tale but that would mean I was letting you distract me from how you didn't answer my question."  
  
If that little connection was coincidence Domino would eat her ammunition pouch, but her curiosity paled under what he was insinuating. "Your _ex_ spent four months impersonating me while Tolliver had me down in that hole you pulled me out of yesterday. _Yes_ , I have a few things to say to her."  
  
"Uh-huh," said Deadpool. "'Things' like Cable had 'a few things to say' to Tolliver when he ran off yesterday?"  
  
"Could be," said Domino, meeting his gaze as best the mask would let her.  
  
"Oh, well, why didn't you say so then?" said Deadpool, pushing himself off the wall and turning back down the corridor. "Sheesh! C'mon!"  
  
This reaction was so unexpected that it took a couple of seconds before Domino realised he was leading her back to the hologram room.  
  
"Then you don't have a problem with me doing this?" she asked, incredulous.  
  
"With you beating the stuffing out of my ex while yours isn't there to referee? Look, sister, I don't know what ideas they gave you about my role in Cable's whole school-teacher-savior-gig, but I just work here."  
  
Now it was Domino's turn to be skeptical. "And the fact she's your ex has nothing to do with that?"  
  
"Not gonna lie, she's still hung up on me—what can I say, I'm a tough guy to get over—but Nessa's a big girl and she's gotta learn to clean up her own boo-boos."  
  
At the door to the hologram room, Deadpool entered six digits into the passcode screen. The computer beeped at him angrily. The door stayed closed.  
  
"I thought you _had_ the code?" said Domino, impatient.  
  
"Keep your tights on, I was watching when Cable coded it. The first digit was either a three or a four or a..."  
  
The computer beeped, this time in a different tone, followed by the sound of a locking mechanism disengaging inside the door.  
  
"...or a five, we have a winner!" said Deadpool.  
  
"Great, I owe you one," said Domino, with as much sincerity as she could stomach, and stepped towards the door. The gratitude tarnished somewhat when Deadpool showed no signs of getting out of her way.  
  
"Hold your horses, tiger," said Deadpool, holding her off with a hand placed square in the middle of her chest and leaning into her face, "you don't think you're stepping out on that there pitch without your pre-game pep talk from Coach 'Pool, do you? Square with me here, is this going to be the sort of game that ends with me cleaning up what's left of the other team with a mop? Because the paparazzi might eat that stuff up, but the local boy-in-blue sees things a little differently, savvy?"  
  
Domino looked down pointedly at the hand, which guiltily inched itself lower into safer territory. "Weren't you just telling me how much you didn't care what happened to your ex?" she asked.  
  
"I don't, but while I was off dying of cancer this one time there was this whole _thing_ that happened to her with some inbred throwback of an arms dealer blackmailing her into getting her hands in his dirty laundry. Next thing I know, _bam,_ there we are, working the same gig—and by the holy ghost of Meg Ryan's wobbly bottom lip, was _that_ a touching reunion fit for the romantic fucking comedy of the year. What I'm saying here is you might not tell to look at me but I have a few of my own issues with Nessa to figure out, and the nice man in the white coat with the collection of decorative scalpels is real big on me working through them in what he likes to call _constructive stages_. Would be nice to know there's gonna be enough of her left for that when you're done."  
  
"Get out of my way, Deadpool," said Domino, rapidly approaching the end of her patience.  
  
"I can still watch, right?"  
  
"Go _away_."  
  
"Fine, this is me, _walking away_ ," said Deadpool, gesticulating at her behind him even as he did, "but you better understand that you got ten minutes tops before I'm back with popcorn."  
  
Domino hit the button to lock the door behind her, glad to see the last of him, and doing her best to put that offhand comment about blackmail out of her mind.  
  
With the door shut the only light in the simulation room filtered dimly through the observation windows, high above. "Lights," Domino instructed, remembering a little late that even that command might not be active with the current security settings turned up to 'paranoia', but the room saved her the embarrassment by lighting up on cue.  
  
Since the holographic technology in here could just as easily make a proper bed as rough pallet or a thin mattress, Copycat had been given the former to sleep on, no matter that it stuck out like something from an Alice in Wonderland-inspired hallucination against the stark metal that covered everything else. She stirred with the lights and sat up, watching Domino approach with the bleary look of the not yet properly awake. If she'd suffered any lost sleep for her sins it didn't show.  
  
"Where's Cable?" she asked.  
  
"Sleeping in," said Domino, posture squared and gaze locked a pointed several inches beyond her head.  
  
Copycat froze in the act of rubbing sleep from her face and stared, eyes widening as the implications sunk in.  
  
Good. Domino wanted her to know what was about to happen. No more delays, no second guessing her judgement, they were having this out _here_ and _now._  
  
"I don't think we've been properly introduced, what with how I was barely conscious when they brought me to meet you—that's right, _barely_ conscious and I _do_ remember," she added, when Vanessa looked startled by that information. "But you already seem to know more about me than what I like to share, and your boss made the time to go to great lengths about what _you_ do for a living while he had me locked up in that rat-infested hole, so we're going to skip the pleasantries." Domino took a breath. "This _imitation_ of me that's so good even Cable couldn't tell the difference—I want to see it."  
  
Copycat muttered something, looking away.  
  
"You have something to say?"  
  
"I said, it's not that easy," Copycat pleaded, barely louder.  
  
"Not that _easy_?" Domino echoed. "You had everyone here convinced you were me for the last four months straight, and _now_ it's too hard?"  
  
"Maybe you didn't catch the part where it took me all evening to remember how to _stop_ ," Copycat snapped, teeth clicking in the manner of a cornered animal baring its fangs. "Pull up a chair," she suggested, hunching back in on herself, "I'll tell you all about how much I wish I was one of the ones who got those powers you can switch on and off as you please, but the 'gift' I got is so temperamental that I'm just waiting for the day when a _sneeze_ turns me blue in public. I let my mind wander looking at the cute guy across the isle on the bus, and I _am_ that cute guy, do you get what I'm saying? Being you that long was like... like clenching a muscle until it seized. Do I have to spell out how it felt to release it after so long?"  
  
Domino took a long look at her, her eyes shying away from contact, fingers clutching at the edge of the mattress, the very picture of the pitiful, battered waif, and felt rage rising like bile in her throat.  
  
"Don't you _dare_ screw with me, _not_ here and _not_ today, I am _not_ in the mood and you can save the sob stories for someone who cares. That was _not_ a request. I don't give a damn whether you're going to _enjoy_ it."  
  
"Neither did Tolliver," Copycat spat right back.Low blow, but it would have hit harder if it hadn't been on just the level Domino wanted to see. "You're not the only one he screwed over," she threw out, defensive, "I didn't volunteer for this job, he _forced_ me into it; I didn't get any more choice about how I spent the last four months than you did."  
  
That, on the other hand, was everything she should have known better than to imply; the space between them was gone before Domino knew she was doing it, the need to grab her bodily and shake some sense into her thrumming through her fingers.  
  
"Really? Sounds to me like maybe he had the right idea," she said, holding herself back by inches. "You see, I'm not hearing that you can't do what I want from you, I'm hearing that you _won't_. So morphing is like flexing a muscle to you—well, in my experience, muscle memory is never that easy to unlearn, and I don't think pulling off a morph you had that long to get used to is nearly as hard as you want me to believe. So what's really holding you back?"  
  
"Do you think I _liked_ being you?" There was a desperate, high-pitched note in Copycat's voice and she was shaking visibly; any points she might have gained for what was left of her determination to hold her ground more than undone by how far she was already leaning back.  
  
"So this _is_ something you don't _want_ to do," said Domino, victorious.  
  
"I..."  
  
"How much is it going to take to bring it all rushing back?" Domino didn't wait for an answer before balling up a fist and throwing it in Copycat's face.  
  
The blow caught her under the chin and sent her rolling heels-over-head backward over the bed. At the last second, she found purchase on the mattress with one hand and turned the motion into a neat roll that landed her squarely on her toes on the far side.  
  
In all that motion, Domino missed the exact moment that the transformation took place. After, staring across the room into her own face, the first thought to cross her mind was that Copycat couldn't be _all_ that good; there was no way _that_ was what she looked like when she was furious.  
  
"There. Was that so hard?"  
  
"You stupid _bitch_ ," Copycat screeched, leaping the bed and coming at Domino fist first, "Do you have _any idea_ what you've made me do?"  
  
Domino leaned out of the way, and turned to keep Copycat in her sight. "Face how much of those issues with your little shapeshifting trick were all in your head? You're welcome." Copycat was fast enough to keep her moving, but from the way she was throwing herself mindlessly around this was going to be over before it started. However, before Domino could make up her mind whether that was call to revel in her obvious superiority or bemoan the loss of the chance to work out her frustrations at the length they deserved, she watched Copycat weave straight under her returning blow like a pro and throw a sharp jab that very nearly caught her in the gut.  
  
"Is that supposed to make this _easier?"_ Copycat shrieked, leaving an opening Domino was momentarily too surprised to react to. _"_ A little trashy self-help rhetoric and I _haven't_ just undone the hours my body took remembering who I am? _Fuck_ you Domino, you did me enough damage _last_ time I dug you out of my head."  
  
"Leaving things half done never was my style." Domino jumped to avoid a low kick meant to knock her feet from under her. "Nice move," she said, feinted a hook just close enough to put Copycat off her centre, then dropped and swung a leg to catch her in the ankles, "But I do it better."  
  
Domino was on her the moment she hit the floor, yanking her into a headlock with a knee jammed into the middle of her back. After a few seconds of ineffective struggling it seemed to dawn on Copycat that she wasn't making any progress against Domino's grip and nor was Domino letting her go, and she went limp  
  
"Happy now?" Copycat spat, half-choking on the second word. "You wanted to prove who's the better Domino, _congratulations._ Now get _off!"_  
  
Domino tightened her grip. "You don't get out of this that easily. Cable would have found you out inside a week if _that_ was your best."  
  
Copycat's fingers clawed ineffectually at her arms (Domino always _had_ had that habit of keeping her fingernails short). "I suppose it never occurred to you to _thank_ me. Tolliver wanted that bomb set before a week was out. If I hadn't stalled so long..."  
  
"I'll get that for you on a card, shall I—'Thanks _for not blowing my team sky-high'?_ You _knew_ where I was, you could have told Cable any time, but you _left_ me there."  
  
"Tolliver was _blackmailing_ me, you headcase. I couldn't raise a hand against him."  
  
"Oh do go on," Domino growled in her ear, "let's hear all about how my life was worth less than your reputation."  
  
Leaning in that close was a beginner's mistake; Copycat headbutted her in the nose and rolled them both over. In the ensuing tangle of limbs Domino caught an elbow under the ribs and, half-winded, lost what was left of her grip.  
  
Copycat beat her back to her feet, and had the gall to stand there and watch, flexing her fingers, as Domino got her balance back. "I couldn't expect you to understand—how by the time I'd known him long enough to trust him," the punch came a split-second before Domino was ready—deflecting it was easy; keeping her balance steady enough to retaliate in its wake, much harder, "it was already too late!"  
  
Having to watch those words coming from her mouth made Domino's lip curl. "Too _late?_ " She was at a ridiculous angle to kick Copycat in the face but that didn't stop her trying, "What's a _fourth_ month in that hole when I'd already lasted _three,_ is that what you thought?" The kick sailed harmlessly over Copycat's shoulder. That guiding sense that was Domino's mutant birthright was screaming at her now, but she was too mad to listen. She hurled herself back at her opponent with her fists flying.  
  
Copycat stood her ground. "Oh, it's _all_ -" Domino's first punch left her with her arm trapped across her body, Copycat's fingers like a vice around her wrist, _"about-"_ the second should have got her in the jaw before she could press that advantage— instead it met the same fate, _"you,_ isn't it?" This last Copycat delivered leaning so close into Domino's face that she flinched away. When she tried to twist out of the lock Copycat let her, kept her hold on Domino's left arm and used her own momentum to twist it behind her back. "But that's got to be easier than believing the pawn Tolliver sent to take your place wasn't such a complete wretch she was _grateful_ for the honour of being you."  
  
"Give me a break, a morpher who finds it easier to take someone else's face than to show her own? Freud would have had a field day." Copycat had sounded so close, but when Domino jerked her head back in mimicry of Copycat's trick she hit nothing but air. "You should count yourself lucky, most people who hate themselves that much don't have another option to fall back on." Talking should have been a way to keep her enemy distracted while she locked a foot behind Copycat's ankle but the ankle wasn't there, her own feet wouldn't move fast enough—everything below her hip was beginning to feel like one long cramp. She couldn't be out of breath this fast, she was _better_ than this!  
  
"And that's supposed to make it _better?"_ said Copycat, holding her there far, far too easily. "What would Freud have to say about a merc lady who went to this much trouble to bash in someone else wearing her face?"  
  
Something hit Domino in the back of the knee and by the time she registered that nothing was holding her up anymore she was too close to the floor to do much about it. She caught herself on her hands an inch above the ground and rolled back to her feet, wrists screaming.  
  
"He'd call it _therapy._ " The words came out as a gasp.  
  
" _Therapy_ ," scoffed Copycat. "You want therapy, when do talk about what kind of person pins all her issues on the easy target just because her boyfriend let the big bad walk away?"  
  
Domino let out a roar and tackled her, straight to the midsection. Catching her by surprise, she wrapped her hands around Copycat's belt and hurled her at the bed. The bed frame was metal and very solid; the throw should have slammed her right into the corner, but Copycat pulled off a million to one mid-air twist in the middle of the motion, missed the end with every limb by less than inches and rolled clean over the mattress again to come up on her feet on the far side. Domino was following long before she landed only to see Copycat swing into a full roundhouse kick without even so much as a glance back at what she was aiming for. The million years a move that wide gave you to get out of the way meant nothing when you'd hurled yourself into mid air with every expectation nothing like that could be coming. The kick hit Domino square across the face and hurled her into the bed end so hard the whole frame sea-sawed off the floor, joints shrieking.  
  
"Come on, Domino," said Copycat.... _somewhere,_ "who are you really mad at? Is it..." There was something about Tolliver, rubbing her face in her own helplessness, but the words went straight by; they didn't matter, the only thing that mattered was figuring out where they were coming from, all the while _not_ thinking about how much luck it had taken to land that kick blind.  
  
"Is it Cable, for never realising I wasn't the real thing?" That damned voice again— _there_ she was, standing tall and comfortable, practically posing by the edge of the bed, like a mirror image that didn't know how to fucking behave. Domino launched herself at her with all the momentum she could throw into one blow, but at the moment she should have connected, somehow Copycat wasn't there. She stuttered to a stop with the rest of the world lagging tantalisingly far behind her; when Copycat came back, she came out of nowhere.  
  
"Or is it yourself, for never letting him get to know you well enough to tell the difference?" she spat, so close to Domino's face that she actually gasped. She didn't see the blow coming.  
  
"This macho bullshit—all this 'who's the better Domino'—you picked the wrong girl to try this on," Copycat went on as Domino gasped for breath and cursed her for not having the decency to punch her in the ear and spare her having to listen to all this crap. "I _know_ you, Dom. That voice at the back of your mind telling you how much you're going to regret this when you've calmed down? Well I've _heard_ it. Want to hear how long it's been there? Want me to tell you all about the day you realised it had started to sound like _Cable?_ How hard it made it to take the bad money jobs and go on looking yourself in the eye in the mirror in the morning? Should I tell you just how much it had to do with how you could never blame him for what he did to Hammer and Kane the way you knew you should have? There's no-one you ever shared that one with, is there Dom— _but I know._ "  
  
Running on pure rage and little else, Domino scraped herself back to her feet one more time. "What the _fuck_ would you know? Four months in a mask and you _know_ me?" Something damp was trickling down the side of her face; she didn't check what colour it left on the back of her sleeve after she wiped it away.  
  
"Better. I _was_ you. All your looks and all your luck and _all_ your dirty secrets. Say whatever you please about Tolliver, he likes his people to be _good_ at what they do, and I promise you there is _no-one_ better than me. There's nothing _cosmetic_ about my imitations." She spread her hands. "Come on, Domino, you're never going to get another chance like this again—you want to punch yourself in the face that badly, let me have it."  
  
It would have been nice to say a calmer Domino could have called that bluff, but she'd never been good with mind games. It didn't matter if this gave that fake exactly what she'd asked for, it didn't matter if there was no physical way to throw so many months' of having your impostor's success waved under your nose into one blow. Lips and fingers curling back in tandem, Domino felt every last tendon in her arm straining before she let it go, and watched Copycat's head snap under the blow with the slap- _crunch_ of too little flesh separating bone from bone.  
  
For a long moment Domino actually wondered if she'd broken the impostor's neck.  
  
In the next, Copycat looked back at her, horrifyingly lucid, spat once, snapped her head back so neatly she might have been playing the punch in reverse and glared at Domino with her teeth bared and fire in her eyes. A small trickle of blood made its way down her chin from her lip. She didn't wipe it away.  
  
"That's _it?!_ " she roared, and of all insults she had the nerve to sound _betrayed_ by Domino's weakness—by her inability to make a dent in a copy carved from raw sinew. "That's the best you've got?"  
  
The kick that slammed straight through Domino's guard and into her side could have easily got her in the gut instead, and only didn't because Copycat hadn't meant it to. Another solid blow there now would have put her down for a good long while, and it sank into Domino's awareness like a knife that the only reason she was still on her feet was because Copycat _wanted_ her running.  
  
"The great Domino, mercenary extraordinaire a snap of her fingers and all the cards fall her way," in Copycat-Domino's voice the words almost sang, they hit with as much force as the punches Copycat hurled her way, almost like an afterthought, "can't topple a two-bit fraud without a single move she didn't steal from someone else? _This_ is the real Domino?"  
  
Domino picked herself up and ran, as best she could with every muscle in her body busily remembering it had been _four months_ since she'd done this last, and stupid rage only gave you a pass to forget that for so long. What she managed was closer to a stagger, and worse for knowing every passing blow she dodged missed only with Copycat's permission.  
  
"Would the real Domino have let scum like Tolliver tag her off the street? Would the _real_ Domino have let him lock her in a cave for four months like a cartoon princess, waiting for her boyfriend to come rescue her?"  
  
Those words in her voice—it didn't even _sound_ like she ought to, not to anyone who'd never heard what Domino heard in the privacy of her own head. But here she was still running, until a calculated kick that sank deep into the muscle of what passed for her good leg took it out from under her. Domino caught herself on one wrist, lost any chance of pushing herself back up when Copycat swept what was left of her support out from under her. She landed hard on an elbow and from there it was all she could do to get her arms up to shield her face from the ground.  
  
Copycat towered over her, tall and twisted in fury, and if she wasn't attacking it could only be because her point had been made. "You tell me, _Neena_ ," she growled, "which one of us _sounds_ more like the real Domino to you?"  
  
Domino dropped her guard, mostly out of shock. "Mother of _fuck,_ you really _do_ think you're me!"  
  
Maybe luck really was still with her, that must have been exactly the right thing to say. The other Domino froze.  
  
In all the long, surreal experience that was fighting a perfect copy of herself that day, there was nothing that would stay with Domino as long as the sight of her own face twisting into an expression that did not belong on it at all, in the moments before Copycat came suddenly and utterly apart. "No..." she whispered.  
  
Domino stared as Copycat raised her hands inch by twitching inch towards her face. Surely, after all this, it couldn't be _that_ easy?  
  
" _No!_ " Copycat shrieked, louder now, the full magnitude of the last few minutes sinking in deep. "No, no, I'm not doing this again, I'm not you. I'm _not_ you. I'm _not you._ " She staggered backwards two paces before her legs gave out and she sank to the floor in a quivering heap. "I'm—I'm... I'm..."  
  
After a few moments of this, Domino reached for the last of her reserves, firmly told a number of muscles exactly what they could do with their protests, and levered herself, albeit haltingly, back to her feet. She limped a couple of paces towards what was left of Copycat, down for the count in every way that mattered, but as a spectacle it got old quickly. Because really, where the fuck was the satisfaction in having it proven that your replacement was every inch the basket case you'd gone out to show yourself she was?  
  
"Vanessa," she offered.  
  
Copycat looked up at her, wild-eyed and helpless.  
  
"Your... _ex_ called you Nessa," clarified Domino. "Vanessa. Right?"  
  
She watched her own lips silently mouth the name.  
  
The reverse transformation was slower; Domino's skin shrinking away in patches as the blue returned from underneath, spreading until she finally had the face to (in Domino's not exactly charitable estimation) suit that hang-dog expression she was pulling.  
  
"That didn't seem so hard this time." said Domino.  
  
Vanessa buried her face in her hands. "Oh fuck _off,_ already! You've made your goddamned point."  
  
"Yeah," allowed Domino, barely grudgingly. "And you made yours pretty loudly too. But I think we still have a few things to talk about before we're done here, no?"  
  
Vanessa gave one terse nod.  
  


* * *

One on one, with no energy left to second-guess herself, Domino couldn't have said she liked 'Vanessa' much, or that she would have necessarily thought much better of her had they met under very different circumstances. Not even several years of Cable's influence had managed to add more than a very little extra depth to the shallow well of patience available to Domino for dealing with nature's born victims, and none of the evidence of anything Vanessa had done to fight that status did much to temper gut reaction.  
  
"I don't _believe_ you thought you could beat me," Vanessa grumbled. "Four months on starvation rations at the bottom of a hole—you haven't even seen the _sun_ since before New Year's—have you looked in the mirror lately? You don't look like you have the muscle left to bench-press a broom."  
  
"Let's say this morning hasn't been my proudest moment and leave it there, okay?" Domino returned. "You want a rematch after I've a couple of weeks back in the weight room, you just say the word."  
  
"Count me out."  
  
"Good thing you came out on top of this one," this admission came out through a corner of Domino's mouth, "or I'd have to really wonder how you ever made Cable buy that you were me."  
  
Vanessa poked gingerly at a muscle on her upper arm that was starting to blacken and wrinkled her nose. Seated on the floor with her back to the edge of the mattress as far away from one another as the length of the bed would allow, the job of damage assessment was keeping Domino similarly occupied between exchanges (bruises, for the most part, but enough of them that she'd be remembering this a while). The arrangement also thankfully spared them the necessity of making eye contact any more often than they could stomach.  
  
"For the record," said Vanessa, "I _hated_ being you."  
  
"You had _me_ fooled."  
  
"Well _yes_ , Dom, fooling people is what I do," said Vanessa, but without any real malice. "Keeping track of that little corner of myself that's still _me_ at the back of my mind—that's the hard part. The truth is," she admitted, fingers twitching feverishly over a safer patch of skin under the bruise, "you didn't have it so far wrong. Yes, I got lost in the role; it was the only way I could deal with what I was doing. I never forgot I was working for Tolliver, but I was _you_ working for Tolliver, because... because, hell, I didn't even know why. I was Domino who was a traitor to her own friends, trying to play both sides without giving myself away. Spilling the truth to Cable wasn't much of an option when even I couldn't keep track of it."  
  
"So this is a thing with you?" Domino asked, still getting her head around some of that. "The mutant shape shifter who copies so well even she can't tell the difference?"  
  
"Look, I'm not great at compartmentalising my entire psyche. I don't usually have to keep it up that long with a telepath watching my every move."  
  
Domino stretched an arm over her shoulder and winced, happy to pass it off as muscle-pain. "If we're sharing, you were right about me and Cable too. We're not... I don't know what we are half the time. I'm not going to paint us as soulmates or any of that dime-store novel crap, but as you seem to have picked up, there aren't many people who ever got as far under my skin as Nate did. If he couldn't tell the real me from a fake... well, there probably isn't anyone who could. I may not have reacted so well to having that thrown in my face."  
  
Vanessa scoffed out one high note of laughter, but Domino didn't feel she had much license to object until Vanessa followed it up with, "How about 'convenient'? Because that's what it was, right? One big, fat relationship of _convenience_ between two mercs who made a great team but who could never work up the guts to talk to each other about whether they wanted to be more than that."  
  
"Word of advice from one social throwback to another," Domino cut in before she could dig _that_ hole any deeper, "that thing you just did? Don't do that. Ever."  
  
"Sorry," said Vanessa, weakly, "force of habit. But if you look under the low blow, you might have spotted that I was the first version of Domino he ever rejected, so I maybe have my own excuses for being bitter. Which is to say I didn't sleep with him. In case you were wondering."  
  
Domino hadn't been, but it would be a stupid to pretend the question wasn't _there,_ waiting to raise its ugly head from amongst the rest of the leftover baggage she was still lugging around as souvenirs of the last few months. She almost asked Vanessa why in hell she thought _that_ would be the sticking point; instead, it came out as, "Well, I suppose if anything would have given you away..."  
  
"What?" said Vanessa, startled. " _Jesus_ , you don't get it, do you? For all Tolliver cared, using that kind of advantage _was_ my job description. I don't think you get how my powers work, Dom. I don't just imitate people, when I copy someone, it goes down to the cellular level. Powers, thought patterns, some of their memories, _habits—_ when I morph there's nothing left to give me away."  
  
Domino breathed out. "Damn." That was Vanessa's way of saying Cable wouldn't have been the first, wasn't it? Well hell if she was going to _ask_ now.  
  
"Besides, he turned _me_ down," said Vanessa, oddly bitter. "There was some excuse about how it wasn't the right time for it—like _that_ was ever the sticking point in what you had together."  
  
"You took that personally," Domino guessed.  
  
"Forget personal, I thought it meant he _knew!_ "  
  
"This even with all that big talk about your thought pattern trick?"  
  
"Oh _bite_ me. I told you I'd never had to fool a telepath before."  
  
The conversation hit a lull there as they both sat and processed for a bit.  
  
"How'd he turn you down?" Domino asked.  
  
Vanessa gave her a startled look.  
  
"What?" said Domino. "I may as well _know_ what he's been saying to me behind my back."  
  
Vanessa laughed at little and shook her head, clearly directed at parties not present. "That that wasn't why he'd asked me to come back," she said, not gently. "So of course I said, _good_ , that's-"  
  
"-not what I came back for," finished Domino, over her. She shook her head. "Ha. Of _course_ you did."  
  
"That was where he made his weak excuse about timing," Vanessa went on. "I don't even remember how he worded it—it was that bad."  
  
"Then I would haveasked if he was breaking it off with me," Domino supplied.  
  
"He asked if we _had_ anything to break off,"  
  
"And _you_ said 'you tell me,Nate'."  
  
"And then hesaid goodnight and left me in the hallway," Vanessa finished.  
  
 _"Seriously?"_  
  
"Hand to God."  
  
"That _idiot._ " It wasn't funny, really, except for the part where this was how she heard about it. It was Nate all through.  
  
"I probably would have planted the bomb that night if I hadn't been so busy freaking out," said Vanessa, though it came out in an off-hand way that made it hard to tell whether that was a confession or a joke.  
  
"Oh _Christ._ " That wasn't funny either and she definitely wasn't laughing. "A little soon for that, don't you think?"  
  
"You know the stupid part?" said Vanessa—this time it was definitely a confession. "He was still one of the better parts of being you. Bastard."  
  
Well if _that_ wasn't a statement loaded with subtext. "You didn't fall for him, did you?"  
  
"For Cable? No," said Vanessa, too fast to have thought about her answer, which may have been why only a moment later it had turned into, "I don't know. Give me a month or two to figure out whose feelings were whose and I'll get back to you."  
  
"That doesn't sound like a 'no'."  
  
"Let me finish," said Vanessa. "When I got stuck with this job, I walked in thinking the fastest way out would be to get it over with. That didn't last long, not after I'd been you a few days and realised Tolliver wanted a bunch of kids going down in the collateral, but Cable... well, you know what he's like."  
  
"Even knowing you've been in my head," said Domino, "there are _so many things_ you could be talking about."  
  
"Try this: you know that thing he does where he tosses himself headfirst into whatever's going down, and he drags you and everyone else around along for the ride? He doesn't tell you why. He doesn't tell you what the plan is. You don't even know there _is_ a plan until that moment when you realise it all hinged on you doing _exactly_ whatever you just did, and you realise none of it would have worked if he hadn't trusted you to do it." Around this point her willingness to make eye contact wavered, right on schedule. "Call me crazy for enjoying any part of that, but I'm not used to being trusted. Not the way he trusts you."  
  
 _That_ thing, thought Domino. And even though it frustrated the living fuck out of you, you'd come so far that you couldn't help hanging on to find out what the _real_ plan was—his big picture deal, whatever it was all the little things were adding up towards. That thing he was always dropping just enough hints about to keep you guessing.

At least until it turned out 'that thing' was worth watching two of your teammates burn for. "You have an interesting way of defining 'trust'."  
  
"I realise," said Vanessa. "Even so. You _know_ it's true."  
  
That was hard to argue when she'd stuck by him anyway, and not solely on account of a conscience that had taken to singing everything to the tune of _do as I say, not as I do_. Most people who knew Cable threw in the towel around when they realised that no matter what the stakes were, he was _never_ bluffing. If it took a sacrifice or two to reach his endgame, c'est la vie. Where Domino had failed was that she'd stuck around a little past that and realised that as often or not, that _was_ the bluff. No matter how well he played the omnipotent mastermind, even he wasn't infallible. Even Cable needed someone around to watch his back.  
  
Because _now_ was such a perfect time to go pulling _those_ stitches.  
  
"What's Tolliver got on you?" Domino asked, because someone needed to change the subject. "Someone mentioned 'blackmail'."  
  
"I took a job for him a year ago when I was hard up for cash," Vanessa replied, "it was a chicken-feed job, nothing I hadn't done before. Borrow someone's face, walk in, walk out with a file under my arm. What I didn't know then was that he got it on tape."  
  
"Minus any details that could lead the fuzz back to him?" Domino guessed.  
  
"Exactly," said Vanessa. She hesitated a bit before adding, "No lecture on how I should have known better than to get in bed with his type?"  
  
"From _me?_ How do you think Cable goton Tolliver's blacklist? You take one bad job from the wrong guy, and next thing you know he has a grudge that's aging like good brandy." Though if that was really all there was to Tolliver's issues with Cable, Domino was going to have to find some more equipment worth eating. "I'm a merc, Vanessa. A merc with _luck powers_. I know when not to jinx myself."  
  
That actually got her a smile. Not that Domino was looking or anything. She levered herself to her feet, conscious of Vanessa still watching.  
  
"So... is that it? Are we good?" Vanessa asked, fingers twitching again, face surprisingly open.  
  
"Good?" echoed Domino, through teeth that suddenly did not seem to want to unclench. "I don't think that's likely, do you? You've got your issues, fine, but don't think for one second that excuses half of what you helped put me and this team through. You want to make amends, that's on your neck. But you may have noticed I suck at this talking about my feelings shit, so I'll just say that if I have to deal with knowing I could go missing for months without anyone noticing a thing, it... _helps,_ knowing it took the best to pull it off. That it's one less thing I have to blame Nate for."  
  
Two steps closer the door she stopped again on a whim. "Oh, and Vanessa? Thanks. For not blowing my team sky high."  
  
"Any time," said Vanessa. "Though if I'd been being fair I should have told you to thank Deadpool for ratting me out first—all I did was stall. Not that you'd have much to thank him for if Cable hadn't hired him," if she'd had a point at the start here, it was rapidly devolving into thinking aloud, "and even that sounds like it was just some crazy whim, so I wouldn't thank him either. You might as well call it-"  
  
"Luck?" said Domino, actually feeling a little lighter for the first since roughly forever. "ThatI can live with."  
  
She got to the door without looking back again after that and locked it on the way out, but she very nearly thought better of it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **More trivia from the Marvel back-catalogue**  
>  Canonically, in the aftermath to Vanessa's big reveal as an impostor in the comics, she and Domino were briefly forced to work together to track a missing Cable down, but Vanessa snuck off before any of those lingering issues between them could be given any real closure. While they did eventually get around to settling their differences in canon, it took them until _Cable_ #37-39 to do it – and to put the scale of that delay in perspective, their last meeting in X-Force happened long before Cable's solo series had been greenlighted for issue #1. The official version goes into ( _much_ ) less in detail than this one does and, as such things generally do, shared a lot of its page time with a subplot about microscopic mutant-hating baddies messing with everyone's emotions. Not that that was necessarily a bad thing - after the matter had languishing unresolved for so long and both of them had had so much time to come to terms with what they'd gone through individually, making a bigger deal out of the issue would probably have been overkill. This is the main relevant page from the last issue of that arc (after they'd gotten through the inevitable punching-each-other-in-the-face stage of the therapeutic process). 
> 
> All the same, there's enough hinted at between the lines in the comics about what they both went through that I always felt there could have been more done with their eventual confrontation. Or more to the point, they're going to have to deal with each other a fair bit more in the GI-verse in the near future than the comics ever made them, and emotions are still new and raw, so the showdown _had_ to have been a much messier deal. My original plan was to skip over this scene entirely and summarise it in the start of the next chapter, but then I started speculating about exactly how it would have gone and wanted to try writing it out, and the end result got away from me a bit. I have an odd fondness for Vanessa and found myself quite enjoying writing for Domino once I'd gotten into it. 
> 
> As a bit of tangential trivia, although the stuff about Vanessa's shapeshifting letting her copy everything down to the thought patterns of her target comes straight from the pages of canon, rarely will you see a clearer example of the knots the writers ended up tying themselves in to retcon Cable's psi powers over his earlier appearances. By _Cable_ #39, the fact Vanessa was able to fool a telepath needed some serious explaining. Back in X-Force, no-one even knew he was supposed to be telepathic, and the 'first' time he uses those powers in any significant capacity on page in _Cable_ #19 comes as a surprise to everyone including his own son. 
> 
> You run into a lot of that sort of thing when you start trying to make sense of back issues.


	7. Chapter 7

Cable woke late the following morning, feeling his age in a way he never did. The new synth-skin over his left cheek pulled uncomfortably as he rolled over and fumbled for the light; it always took a few days to loosen up when it was newly patched, leaving him half-smiling or half-grimacing at the world. Better than bare metal, at least.  
  
It might have been nice to have had some period of forgetfulness to wake up to this morning, but sleep had hardly dulled his recollections of yesterday's excitement—Deadpool, Copycat, Domino; betrayal in more flavours than one person should face in a year, let alone a matter of hours. Against the confrontation with Tyler though, it all paled into insignificance. In the harsh light of morning it was harder to be sure he'd been telling the truth when he'd told Tyler that his relief at finding his son alive came before all else, when he couldn't begin to guess what scars all those years as Stryfe's puppet might have left on his body and soul. He didn't know if there was going to be a way to save Tyler from this, or how much of his son might be left to find when he did. Maybe the greater relief would have been to discover Tyler really had been put out of his misery all those years ago.  
  
It wasn't a chain of thought he was nearly awake enough to deal with, or to avoid.  
  
Coming back to the past should have been a way to put some distance between himself and old failures; a new start in a part of history where his influence could still make a difference, where no-one would know his name. Instead, he'd found himself in the midst of an unplanned reunion with a father he'd never known, a mother who never birthed him, a sister who would be sent ahead to found the very order that raised him in her twilight years, a clone who'd followed him from the other end of time, and a son he'd thought long dead. Everyone was here—all except Aliya, doomed by the misfortune of being a Summers only by marriage rather than birth.  
  
In that moment he found himself missing her more than he'd known how to miss her in years.  
  
Someone thumped loudly on his bedroom door. "Nate, are you up? It's after ten." The voice was Domino's, and he resented the intrusion for all of the three seconds it took for him to recognise that if ever he'd needed distracting from his own thoughts, he needed it now.  
  
He swung his legs over the side of the bed and looked down at himself. It wasn't as though Dom would mind walking in on him half-dressed. "Barely. Come in anyway."  
  
The door swung open to reveal Domino silhouetted against the brighter light outside, looking little healthier than she had the previous day. She gave the room a cursory glance and stepped inside.  
  
"I wasn't expecting you to beat me out of bed this morning," said Cable.  
  
"I would've said the same yesterday, but it turns out my souvenir of Tolliver's basement is having my sleep cycle shot to hell. I woke up three times thinking I was back there." Domino screwed up her face in distaste.  
  
"I'm just glad we found you alive." On a better day that might have been more than he would've cared to admit out loud, but it was shaping into the kind of morning when it paid to count your blessings. Domino gave him a sharp look but didn't comment on this show of sentimentality.  
  
"You can thank Tolliver for being so obsessed he couldn't even kill you without making sure he'd have someone to gloat to afterwards," she said, starting to pace restlessly along the length of the bed. "There's more behind this than how the Khyber job went bad. Whatever the fuck he's after you for, this has never been business. This is personal."  
  
"I'd gathered." Domino had known him too long not to know what an answer that clipped meant, but the sound of her feet advancing businesslike towards him stood as evidence that she wasn't about to let this go so easily.  
  
"Well I hope you have, Nate," she said, shoving herself inside his guard and holding his eye, "because this isn't over." Eye contact being a two-way street, this was as far as she got before something made her hesitate, and Cable found himself treated to a startlingly immediate minds-eye view of exactly how haggard he looked. By the time he made it back to his own head it was to the sight of Domino backing off a step. For a long moment both of them found other things to look at.  
  
"Look," said Domino after slightly too long, tone milder, "I don't know if I even want to know the sordid details about whatever it was you did to get his attention, but I'm not saying it's what you deserved. The man is _unhinged._ It's either going to be him or you _and_ everyone who ever knew your name."  
  
There weren't many would've been able to appreciate the years of association buried in that statement—it was a long way from apology, but it was Domino all over. Though she'd probably side with him against anything up to the heavens themselves, she'd never be able to watch him so much as stub his toe without wondering what he'd done to bring it on himself.

"Trust me, Dom," he said, "I suffer from no illusions about where things stand with Tolliver."  
  
Domino let out a huff, but seemed ready to accept that on this topic he was determined to be enigmatic. "Then how about we talk something closer to home then—how things stand with that little spy, for example?"  
  
Copycat. Still cooling her heels in the Danger Room until they figured out what to do with her. "It's on my list for this morning."  
  
"Well, you can save yourself the trouble. I dealt with her already."  
  
"You what?!" The words weren't out of his mouth before he was halfway to his feet. Domino waved him back down.  
  
"At ease, soldier. You don't get to write her off as a past tense issue – _yet_. She and I had a little chat, girl to girl."  
  
Cable rubbed two fingers over his brow. Five minutes out of bed and already he had a whole new kind of headache coming on. "Did you learn anything to your advantage?"  
  
"Just that Tolliver likes his people malleable and with more issues than _New Scientist,_ "said Domino, tone bitter enough to bite. "She's a mess, Nate, and I'd wager he'd only get credit for the layer on the top."  
  
"Really."  
  
"Raise you an _'unbelievably'._ We've landed ourselves the world's first shapeshifting mole with an identity crisis."  
  
That particular revelation failed to make the impact it probably deserved. Weighed up against his own impressions of the shapeshifter, if anything it was a little too easy to believe, and if even Domino had noticed, that said a lot. "She still has her share to answer for."  
  
"To a shrink, maybe."  
  
In the back of Cable's mind there was a part of him still tuned to look for anything 'Domino' said that would give her away as a fake; it was occurring to him that perhaps he should be wondering whether there could be something more behind Domino's sudden expression of sympathy. "That's unexpectedly prescient of you, under the circumstances."  
  
"Your sit-rep is a few hours out of date," said Domino, "Look, Nate, we both knew I walked in wanting nothing more than to rip her a new one with my nails. But there's just no satisfaction in beating something that battered."  
  
To hell with subtlety. "Just making sure I'm not going to walk in on her later and find her 'proving' her psychosis by taking your form and insisting she's the real Domino and that the fake walked out this morning."  
  
The edge of Domino's mouth quirked upwards. She angled a finger at her head. "You want to make sure? Take a good long look. The memories you want start about an hour ago."  
  
Cable took the invitation and, well beyond the easy question of identity, was surprised to learn just how accurately Domino had represented the encounter. He followed them as they fought, came to a stalemate, and finally settled down to talk; drawing out with a wince only when they started talking about him.  
  
In real time, Domino was still smirking at him, and likely only more for guessing where he'd stopped. Cable considered and rejected three different things to say in his own defence before giving it up as a lost cause.  
  
"Didn't hold much back, did you?" he commented, failing to keep as far as he'd have preferred from the inevitable double-entendre.  
  
Domino gave an easy shrug. "I got out of Tolliver's dungeon wanting nothing more than a warm body to take all those lost months out on. But I'm going to have to settle for a steak the size of my face and your promise I'm going to get a solid month sleeping on a feather mattress so thick you'll have to dig me out of in the morning."  
  
That drew out more than its share of memories. "The kind you always used to hate when we were living on the hotel circuit?"  
  
"The very same."  
  
"Do you want me to promise you that steak too?"  
  
"Sure, any time you're off the babysitting roster." This last remark confused him until she added, "I have to say, Nate, when you mentioned your new 'team', I was expecting a few more faces to be old enough to shave."  
  
The truth of that was that you didn't tell an old friend you wanted to reassure that you'd brought your 'students' to rescue her, but that didn't mean they deserved to be written off so easily. "They're not so much younger than you or I were when we got into this business."  
  
Domino raised her eyebrows. "One kid makes a good team mascot, but seven? That makes a _school trip_. Don't the X-Men don't have a problem with you recruiting their kids?"  
  
"Things have changed while you've been away, Dom. What you're standing in now is what's left of the X-Mansion." Thatgot him her attention. "Basement level, if you want to know. The X-Men have other issues on their minds lately. Someone had to step up to fill the vacuum."  
  
The word 'mid-life crisis' fluttered through Domino's mind. She shook her head. "And what do the kids think of that?"  
  
"They have their share of growing up left to do," Cable admitted, "but they follow me by choice. They all expected to become X-Men someday. My outfit isn't so very different."  
  
"And here I thought I was going to get another of your 'for the good of the future' explanations," said Domino, a hand on one cocked hip.  
  
"Well. That too."  
  
"What about that mercenary—what's his story?"  
  
"Deadpool?" Blunt honesty was usually the last resort in Cable's arsenal, but sometimes it did little harm. "Tolliver sent him to kill me; I made him a better offer. In less than twenty-four hours since he joined us he's identified an enemy agent in our numbers, lead us to one of Tolliver's bases and helped me rescue a very good friend. I'm calling that a good investment. Is that a problem?"  
  
"Honestly?" said Domino, "I don't think I'm going to like him much. I've known him all of a hour or two and I can already tell there's things going on there I don't want to know about, but I'm so far past ready for a gig where I get to work with a familiar face that I'm not feeling picky. Your team, your call. And unless you have something you need your whole team for right now, it looks like I have an appointment with a stack of old newspaper four months thick."  
  
If that was hardly glowing endorsement, nowhere had the idea of working alongside Deadpool been rejected out of hand, and from the back of Cable's sleep-addled brain, something in that triggered an alarm bell. Only when he'd had a moment to gather his thoughts did it sink in that this wasn't the same Domino who'd objected to hiring Wade. _This_ Domino—the _real_ Domino—was making her very first judgement on the subject known.  
  
"What are you smiling at?" the real Domino asked him, after he'd been quiet a moment.  
  
Cable found her looking back at him from the doorway. "It's good to have you back, Dom," he said.  
  
By now, Domino had had long enough to catch on to the fact she'd caught him in a sentimental mood, so if that flattered her she hid it quickly. "Say that after you see the bill on that steak you owe me."  
  
"I will."  
  
"Ch. You old softy," she called around the door frame, and was gone.  
  
Cable was still smiling when Deadpool appeared in it a minute later.  
  
"You're in a good mood," he said, flatly. "Why does that give me the screaming heebie jeebies?"  
  
If there was context that would make this make sense, it was escaping Cable at the moment. "Conscience bothering you?"  
  
"Nah, not since we nailed up that 'no junk mail sign'," said Deadpool, which explained exactly nothing, though it did buy Cable the time for a particular detail from events gleaned from Domino's mind to remind itself to him.  
  
"Perhaps you could help me with something," he said. "I hear Domino got into the Danger Room this morning."  
  
"Well tie me in ribbons and shimmy me backwards up the maypole, was that a 'thankyou' I just heard?"  
  
"I locked that room for a reason, Wade," said Cable, eyebrows twitching upwards.  
  
"A reason? Ooh, do I get twenty questions or am I stuck with three guesses and the option to buy a vowel? Wait, don't tell me—I get it, but Nate—oh my Natey-Nate, you zany old fool you, you didn't and notice you'd gone and locked the door with one of them _on the wrong side_ , and here's all of us standing around too embarrassed to be the one to let you know. Will the whacky hijinks never stop?"  
  
"Wade..." Cable warned.  
  
"Oh come now, Boss, we're men of the world, you and me!" Deadpool declared, leaning against the door frame. "We know the only way to deal with a couple of broads with their panties in a bunch over a little case of she said/she said is to break out the trusty ol' gun-totting hillbillies method: you lock 'em all in a room and stand well back until the problem takes care of itself."  
  
 _Conflict resolution._ Of course that would be his excuse. "That may be a better theory if the consequences of them _not_ settling their differences quickly didn't include one of them ending up dead."  
  
"Either way, problem solved!" said Deadpool cheerfully. "And don't even get me started on the savings we made on therapy bills."  
  
"So you let Domino in entirely out of concern for their own good?" asked Cable, already knowing the skepticism would go right over Deadpool's head, even if he had to duck to make it happen.  
  
Deadpool pointed a finger at his head. "Do you doubt this face? Incidentally, do you realise that the kitchen is completely out of microwave popcorn and your schmaltzy holodeck doesn't have a _single_ pre-set mud-wrestling program? For shame, Boss, how do you expect people to work under these conditions?"  
  
Cable hesitated. Deadpool, meanwhile, ploughed straight on.  
  
"What? You weren't expecting me to get the whole thing on tape, were you? I know it's not everyday you get to see two badass, buxom babes fighting it out over you in a featureless metal room that _refuses_ to reconfigure into a field of jello no matter how many buttons someone tries, but that's what security footage is _for._ "  
  
Cable concentrated hard on keeping his hands away from yet another new knot of tension in his brow and reminded himself again of what Domino had told him when she'd walked in before. There were going to be times ahead when he'd have to push Wade on calls not so different from this one—if it came to that, to remind him very firmly of who was in charge—but this wasn't one of them.  
  
"Nate?" said Deadpool, what may have been the faintest sliver of the smallest trace of uncertainty creeping into his voice.  
  
"Thank you, Wade," Cable pronounced. "It wasn't the means I would have chosen, but I can't deny the situation seems to have turned out for the best."  
  
That much cleared up, it took Deadpool all of a nanosecond to recover and move on. "Great, so seeing as little miss tall, pale and splotchy is still with us, what's up with that? Are you on a share-time arrangement now?"  
  
It struck Cable that despite all they'd been through, he'd known Deadpool for the sum total of a few hours, and this roundabout approach to communication he favoured would take some getting used to yet. "Pardon?"  
  
"I'm talking about my _perks_ , Boss," said Deadpool. "You remember my _perks—_ that clause about the hot-and-cold running amenities you threw into the deal to incentivise me over the line? Because when I signed up I had the idea I was going to have exclusive access to the bump'n'grind machine, not that I'd be here two days before I found my perks had got switched out for one of those employee-of-the-minute rotating prize pool programs."  
  
Something clicked in Cable's head, and it was a something owed less to anything Deadpool had just said than to the return of the tone of voice from when he'd first shown up in the doorway that morning sounding inexplicably betrayed by the sight of Cable in a good mood. A good mood he'd been left in after his conversation with Domino, who Deadpool must have seen leaving Cable's bedroom. Now his reaction was starting to make sense. "You think I'm going to make you share me with Domino?"  
  
"Excuse me? Are _you_ the one with the problem with the saying things out loud thing now? I know how this one goes, Boss, it's a classic for the ages!" The bitterness in Deadpool's voice was rising with every syllable now. "Merc meets merc lady under a silvery moon, the fireworks go off—or maybe that was the C4, who knows, who cares, the earth _moved_ for them and so what if that was mostly the shockwave. Time goes by, merc realises the starter fuse ain't firing up their partnership the way it used to, merc breaks it off with merc lady, merc throws himself at the next merc man to come flying through the doorway looking like he might be up for a bit of candlelit mayhem for two. But then we hit the surprise twist! Merc-man reveals that merc-lady was really _mole-_ lady all along! Merc rescues merc-lady, looks deep into those soleful, high-contrast eyes and realises where the starter-fuse was hiding all along..."  
  
Cable followed all of this with an increasing sense of unexpected delight. Forget counting your blessings – when he'd given up on finding anything worth celebrating this morning, now, bare hours into their arrangement, Deadpool came and handed him _this?_ "You're _jealous_."  
  
"And the spandex makes _your_ butt look big," Deadpool snapped back. "Ain't nothing here throwing any sissy-girl feelings out of joint, we had a _deal_ Boss, and I need to know you're gonna make good on it."  
  
"Wade," said Cable, not even trying to keep the good humour out of his voice, "I wasn't sleeping with Vanessa when I thought she was Domino. Why would you think that would change now?"  
  
"Boss, 'think' is such a weasel word. Does Pepe le Pew _think_ his latest amoré is going to turn out to be a black cat with a little case of the mange? Does Wile E Coyote _think_ his new ACME gadget is going to burn off his eyebrows? Of course, if they were seeing the show from _my_ side of the fourth wall-"  
  
"Are you always such an optimist or am I catching you on a good day?"  
  
"Hello? Did someone sleep through nineteen-ninety?" The sense he was being laughed at was not improving Deadpool's mood. "Wake up and smell the napalm boss, grim, gritty and realistic is _in_."  
  
Cable tilted an eyebrow at him and shifted his posture on the bed to a very deliberate lounge. "Is there going to be anything I can say that will reassure you?"  
  
Deadpool actually _pouted_. "...well, you _could_ tell me all about how much better I am in bed than she is."  
  
"Wade," Cable crooked a finger at him. "C'mere."  
  
Jerking through every step like a puppet fighting its strings, Deadpool crossed through most of the distance between them.  
  
Cable let his smile widen. "I'm glad you brought up your contract. You've just reminded me how many of your own terms you broke yesterday by leading us to Domino."  
  
"If you're going for flattery," said Deadpool, arms folded and nose pointed deliberately off towards a corner, "my weak-spot is a little lower than where you're aiming-"  
  
"I'm getting there. You know, I was just telling Domino how pleased I am in how this particular investment has paid off."  
  
"You _do_ mean me, right?" Everything in Deadpool's voice suggested a man still hunting for the catch.  
  
"Who else?" If Deadpool went on ignoring the obvious invitation in his posture much longer, this was going to get frustrating.  
  
"Oh _shitsteaks,_ I've been here two days, I'm fresh out of ex-employers to double-cross and I've gone and given the Boss _expectations_ about my performance figures."  
  
" _Wade._ All I'm saying is that I'm _very_ pleased with what you've done for us since signing up. So pleased that I thought it would be appropriate to let you decide what reward you'd like."  
  
That finally got him Wade's full attention. "You mean, now?"  
  
"My plans for the morning started and ended with dealing with that Domino/Copycat situation. Seems I have a window free." And if Cable hadn't earned the excuse to enjoy himself a little this morning, he never would. He reached a hand out to trail over the fabric covering Deadpool's thigh; the shiver of anticipation he was rewarded by seemed to run through the both of them.  
  
A few last twitches in Deadpool's neck seemed to mark the end of a losing battle for the defensiveness he'd come in with. "Anything?" he breathed.  
  
"Within reason. I draw the line at another round with _saliva._ "  
  
"Wuss," said Deadpool, cheerfully. "But, anything else?"  
  
Cable decided he very much liked the promise in those words. A couple of telekinetic nudges were all it took to shut and lock the door.  
  
"Why," Cable asked, running his hand inwards, "what did you have in mind...?"


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As the younger members of X-Force show up again in this part and there _are_ a lot of names to keep track of, have another quick link to my [quick pictorial guide to who's who](http://rallamajoop.livejournal.com/121432.html).

Having nothing else particularly pressing to do today, Weasel had spent the morning on his latest brilliant scheme to make Deadpool's teleportation belt indestructible.

Customising his specialised gadgetry to meet his clients' needs was always going to be an inexact science at best. Everything was going to fail occasionally; that much you might as well accept from the outset. What mattered, when you go right down to it, was firstly, that you got paid in advance, and secondly, to make sure that when something critical _did_ fail, it did so in a manner likely to prevent your client from coming back to complain about it. But even with years of experience under his own customised-teleport-belt, building for Deadpool remained a job that presented its own very specific challenges - chief among them being that nothing Weasel made, no matter how fastidiously armoured, would ever be nearly so indestructible as the man wearing it. Or to cut right to the heart of the problem: even if Deadpool himself could survive being sliced in half, his teleportation devices _couldn't_ , and this discrepancy in relative robustness had caused friction between the man and his engineer on more than one occasion.

All things considered, Wade had always been very understanding about the issue, which was to say he'd never yet shot Weasel in the head after tracking his way home the long and hard way after a job went bad, but the problem remained. Making a teleporter that could self-repair or function reliably after being halfway smashed was well beyond Weasel's skill, and he had every confidence that the day he actually ponied up the price for enough black-market adamantium to build even a single armoured casing would be the same day good old Wade simply went and _lost_ the damn thing. This conundrum left Weasel with very few realistic options for improving the device outside of messing around with shock absorbers and crumple zones with limited success. All that said, building Deadpool a piece of equipment he _couldn't_ break remained the sort of engagingly futile challenge, which, nowadays, was much less about achieving success than an ongoing fascination with finding out how Wade would go about breaking the thing next. If nothing else, it kept him employed and busy.

His latest masterstroke involved a contoured outer surface designed to deflect incoming blows away from the teleporter from as many incident angles as possible. A minor shortcoming, according to Weasel's calculations, was that a goodly number of those incoming blows would be deflected into the meaty body of the man wearing the device, but Weasel felt that all considered, this had to be a reasonable compromise.

Discarding his welding goggles, he gave himself a moment to admire the new case, then reached for the internal teleport mechanism so he could double-check that its new cocoon wasn't going to be a little too snug. He very nearly dropped it again when the distinctive hum of an activating teleporter met his ears, the sudden jerk dislodging a shock-absorber which catapulted its way across the room. That didn't make sense, he hadn't even attached the power source yet... he hadn't, had he? Another look confirmed he definitely hadn't. Fortunately for Weasel's tenuous grasp on sanity, this was also the moment where he caught sight of Deadpool's locator icon popping up on the map on his laptop screen, snuggled cosily alongside Weasel's own, and realised there was a much simpler explanation for that worrisome teleport noise.

"Hi Wade," he called over his shoulder, absently scanning the room for his lost shock-absorber. "How'd the assassination go?"

Later, looking back on the situation, Weasel would realise that his first clue that this conversation was about to go completely off the rails was the unnaturally long pause before his visitor replied, "...assassination?"

"Assassination," Weasel repeated, louder. "Job. Hit. You know, the one you were telling me about last week?"

"Ohh, _that_ assassination," said Wade, sounding like nothing so much as a guilty schoolboy being interrogated on the whereabouts of his homework.

"So how'd it go?" Weasel prompted, by now more than half-expecting to hear that Wade had forgotten all about it, probably thanks to getting himself into some convoluted mess of the kind only Deadpool could. Giving up his hunt for his lost component, Weasel swivelled around in his chair and took in the shape of his favourite client, frowning a little to find him hunched into a posture that was positively spooked.

"Er. So, _hypothetically_ ," said Wade, fidgeting like a champion, "what would you say if I told you that instead of dying cleanly and politely like they're supposed to, the target tied me up and engaged all manner of devious sexy wiles to seduce me into rethinking my job options and taking off my suit?"

It was surely a credit to the length of his association with Deadpool that this whole declaration more or less bounced clean off Weasel's brain without inflicting any real damage. The trick to dealing with Wade, in his experience, was to take a step back and see if you couldn't find an angle that put whatever he'd just said into a context where it was forced to make sense. "Isn't that the plot from _Star Strippers of Venus Volume 4_?" he tried, scratching his head.

Wade's demeanour abruptly shifted to that of a different species of schoolboy. "Weasel, my good man, you don't mean to tell me you've been _stealing_ your pal Deadpool's _porn_ , do you?"

"Only if by _your_ porn, you mean that stack of _my_ old videotapes that went missing around the same time you-"

"Okay, not the point," Wade said quickly, waving away the petty issue of petty theft. "So, you've got the picture, right – it's the scene from _Star Strippers of Venus_ – except instead of the seven-foot amazon women wearing two pieces of floss and half a litre of purple body paint, I need you to picture this huge silver-fox old merc guy with abs you could bounce a quarter off, a metal arm and the smuggest face you ever saw this side of Jupiter."

This declaration marked the official point where Weasel began to worry, with 'worry' manifesting in the form of a tiny knot of tension in his temples that promised to spread. Wade's crazed scenario was starting to accumulate a few too many very specific details for comfort. "Is this still hypothetical?"

"Um, it could be _hypothetically_ hypothetical?"

"Then I think I may be about to need a really non-hypothetical drink," said Weasel.

* * *

"You know what I think?" said Rictor, retrieving the ping-pong ball from under the old radiator. "I think Cable knows him from somewhere."

Boomer glanced up from the magazine on her lap. "How'd you figure?"

"Makes more sense than the line he's selling us, doesn't it?" said Rictor. "What, you don't _believe_ he'd really hire a guy who was trying to kill him?"

"And even at _that_ he failed," said Shatterstar.

Cannonball tapped his bat on the table impatiently. "Cable didn't even know his _name_ , Rictor," he said, in what the others were coming to think of as his 'leadership voice'.

"I didn't say they were _pals_ , just maybe they worked together somewhere," said Rictor. "Cable used to be a merc. They could'a got hired for the same job under different code names years ago. They probably never realised they knew each other until they were shooting up the library."

By this point everyone in the rec room was perking up and paying attention.

"I'd buy it," Sunspot shrugged.

" _And_ it would explain why he sent us all out when he saw Deadpool's face," said Siryn, thoughtful.

"Then why wouldn't he say so, genius?" asked Boomer.

"'Cause Cable's usually such a fountain of free information," said Rictor, not bothering to hide a snort.

"Maybe they weren't even on the same side on their old merc job," suggested Siryn, "Maybe they were up against each other last time too, but Cable liked his style."

"Or maybe they're both really embarrassed about not recognising each other sooner," put in Wolfsbane, rapidly warming up to the subject.

"Hope you're writing this down," said Cannonball, tapping his bat one last time on the table before leaving it there, judging the game to be well and truly over. "You'll have the whole plot of next year's summer blockbuster by dinner at this rate."

"Oh come on, Sam, don't grouch – it's not _that_ far out there," said Boomer. "Not like it'd be the first time Cable's kept us in the dark about why he really does the stuff he does."

"Like that time he dragged us all out to a reservation in the middle of nowhere because of 'sources'?" said Wolfsbane.

"No mystery why he did that, he was trying to recruit that guy Warpath," said Sunspot.

"Yeah, _that_ went well, didn't it?" said Rictor.

"Hey, he said we could call him for emergencies, didn't he?" said Siryn. "He just didn't feel like leaving his home undefended again for a while, _craaaazy_ as that sounds."

"He's just desperate to recruit lately, huh," said Boomer, kicking her feet up on the table. "I'd be offended, but hey, less work for _me_ if we've got more hands around."

"Not desperate enough to take morlock cat-girls who crawl up out of the sewers," said Siryn.

"Thank _god_ ," muttered Wolfsbane.

"Ugh, it's like you _want_ me cracking cats-and-dogs jokes!" Boomer grumbled right back. Wolfsbane pulled a face.

"Look, it doesn't matter why he wanted Deadpool to join us," said Cannonball, firmly. "Don't you remember how he wasn't here an hour before he sold out a traitor in our own team and helped us rescue Domino?"

"You think Cable knew one of us was a mole when he hired the guy?" asked Sunspot, thoughtful.

"Maybe," allowed Cannonball. "What _matters_ is that Cable decided he was worth giving a chance, and Deadpool proved him right. Whether he knew there was a mole on our team or whether it was just instinct or what, it was the right call."

"You're no fun. What are we supposed to do for fun around here if we can't gossip?" Boomer grumbled, kicking a foot in his direction.

"Come on, Tabitha, that's an easy one," said Siryn, grinning as she leaned her elbows on the ping-pong table. "We're supposed to give Deadpool that second chance Cable asked us for."

"Ugh, _fine_. Just don't expect me to be any more polite to him than he is to me!"

"Boomer," said Sunspot, with feeling, "some days you speak for all of us."

* * *

Discovering his fridge to be inexplicably understocked for this sort of emergency, Weasel's drink ended up being a lukewarm cup of tea, courtesy of an ancient box of teabags that he had a strong suspicion had been sitting there at the very back of the cupboard since the day he moved in. As with all his prior experiments with the beverage, why centuries of British swore by the calming effects of this drink remained a mystery Weasel felt no closer to solving, though at least every time he took a sip he could rely on distracting himself anew with at least a second or two of mystery of why people drank this stuff. If he was ever going to get through this conversation, this was exactly the sort of diversion he badly needed.

"So this guy seduced you into leaving Tolliver, publicly burning your bridges to seal the deal, and joining his team instead," said Weasel.

Deadpool wrung his hands. "Aw man, you think we're moving too fast? Shit, we _are_ , who am I even kidding? There I was, playing it cool, laying down the ground rules like a boss – not like I was planning on keeping it on the down low forever, but we're hardly on our second date before we're out in public and I'm throwing it right in my ex's face! Vanessa's too! Weas, I just ditched my whole career to move in with this guy _and the kids!_ What if it doesn't work out? What if it turns out he's secretly into _plaid_ or Oprah or home improvement? What if he hogs the remote? What if we disagree about the AK-47 vs the M16? Weas, what am I getting myself into? _I'm too young to be tied down!_ "

Weasel took another sip of his tea and grimaced. "Only you, Wade. Only you."

"I resemble that remark!"

"So you need me to see what I can dig up on him," said Weasel, scrubbing a hand over his brow and reaching for his laptop.

"Weasel, old buddy, old pal, you are _my only hope!_ "

"Alright. What have you got to get me started?"

"Not a lot." Under the mask, Deadpool's face scrunched up in thought. "Goes by 'Cable', has some kinda history with Tolliver. Looking after some of the X-kids but he doesn't seem to be down with the X-folks. Used to be part a' some kinda merc outfit with this panda-looking mutant chick called Domino. Answers to 'Nathan' and Tolliver gave me the job as 'Nathan Winters' – but, y'know..."

"Probably an alias, yeah. Anything else?"

"Uh, mutant, low-level telepathy and TK. Looks about forty-something, but he's obviously had a lot of work done – I'm talking the kind of work that leaves you with a metal arm and a glowing eye."

"Right." Weasel dutifully noted this down. "Leave it with me, I'll see what I can scrounge up."

"Have I told you how much I love you lately, Weas?"

"Please don't. I'll call you if I find anything."

One teleporter activation noise later, Weasel was alone again. He dedicated ten seconds to pushing everything he never wanted to know about Wade's sex life to the back of his mind, then got down to the job of entering both 'Cable' and 'Nathan Winters' into every civil, criminal or metahuman-run database accessible to a man with a reasonably functional set of hacking skills and a few good black-market contacts to boot.

On the surface, there wasn't a lot to find. The only 'real' Nathan Winters in the whole US of A had a birth certificate registered a mere eight years ago by a family that was largely African American. A 'Cable' fitting Wade's description had links to a mercenary group called Six Pack which appeared to have disbanded a few years back, giving his real name as 'Winters' through most of their operation when he gave it at all, which wasn't often. Before his Six Pack days, appearances of either name vanished altogether, which was as glaring a sign of an alias at work as you could ask for.

Time to earn his salary. Weasel set his laptop to run the name through his first-pass search algorithms for obvious real-identity candidates, then got up for another hunt through his kitchen for something with real caffeine in it.

He wasn't out of the room before the computer pinged with the first likely result under the name of 'Nathan Summers'. Cringeworthy as that was, it was still right on point for the level of creativity you got out of a lot of career thugs. Weasel dutifully clicked through the link, took one look at the attached photo of a frowning toddler, and gave himself a good laugh. Ah well, couldn't expect it to be _that_ easy.

He was halfway to the kitchen when something he'd skimmed over in that article on the young Nathan Summers began to nag at him. Weasel sidled back to the screen to double check.

The words _Known Family: Madeline Prior (mother), Scott Summers aka Cyclops (father) – known affiliations: X-Men_ and later _Status: Missing, circumstances unknown_ were still there. Weasel frowned at the screen. The trouble with trying to track down anything the X-Men had ever been involved with was that the truth was _always_ stranger than any fiction you could imagine. Was it possible that _somehow_...?

 _Nah_. Even by X-standards, that had to be crazy talk.

* * *

The warning beeps from the main computer terminal had reached an urgent pitch by the time Cable got to it, and even then, he hesitated several seconds before answering the incoming call. Only a handful of suspects ought to have the means to contact the old Xavier Institute, and fewer still had any reason to believe there'd be someone here to answer now, with the X-Men gone and only the basement rooms of the old building remaining. It seemed doubtful he was about to receive good news.

Hitting 'accept' to find himself looking into the face of G. W. Bridge did little to convince him otherwise. "Bridge. This is an unexpected surprise."

"Cable," Bridge barked. "Hasn't been nearly long enough." There was more grey in his hair than Cable remembered; a little less meat on his grizzled frame, but the sour downturn of his mouth was still ample reminder this was the same man the other members of Six Pack had once voted most likely to unironically utter the words, 'I'm getting too old for this shit,' even five long years ago.

Cable tapped a finger idly against the desk. "How's the SHIELD assignment treating you? Keeping those white gloves good and clean?"

"Oh, spare me. Do you really think I would've called you up to exchange pleasantries? An interesting package turned up on my desk this morning; how'd you like to take a guess what was inside?"

Well, if that was how he was determined to play this. "Why don't you enlighten me?"

"A roll of eight-millimetre film. Undeveloped. Now why do you suppose someone would go to the effort of sending around an old relic like that in the digital age?"

"Archival footage?" Cable guessed.

"Try again. This reel was manufactured only last year – turns out they're still making the stuff for the collector's market."

"Well, putting aside why any of this ought to be my business," said Cable, pointedly, "I imagine someone wants you to believe that what's on that tape is real – no digital effects, no editing."

"Better." Bridge twisted in his chair, leaning into the camera. "Now how would you like to guess what we found on that tape?"

Cable folded his arms. "I'm sure you're about to tell me."

"That footage," said Bridge, "showed us a blue-skinned mutant girl transforming into a perfect replica of one of our staff – an Agent Christopher Mahey."

Cable allowed his eyebrows to inch very slightly up his forehead. "I take it Agent Mahey didn't admit to any comparable mutant powers when he signed up."

"Clearance scan couldn't find an X-gene anywhere in his body. We'd be double checking that now, only our agent's been missing for over two months. Last time anyone saw Mahey in the flesh just so happened to be the same day _someone_ made an unauthorised download of our complete personnel files from his station. Until today, we've been looking for a double agent; as of this morning... well, Cable, why don't you tell me what this looks like?"

"Sounds to me like SHIELD has a major hole in its security measures concerning shapeshifters," said Cable. "And it sounds like someone wants you to think they sent in a shapeshifter disguised as your man, then abducted the real thing to make it look like an employee gone rogue and throw you off the scent. But if so, the first question would be why film it, much less send you the evidence?"

"That's where you'd be _wrong_. Our own questions start with: who's our mysterious shifter, and is this tape _real_? Lucky for us, the package came with a note pointing us to a home address for this shapeshifter."

"Is this where I find out what this riveting story has to do with me?"

"Interesting how you'd guess that, Cable," said Bridge, leaning back in his chair, "because our info tells us she's hiding out in the ruins of the old Xavier Institute with a team by the name of X-Force, under the command of someone with your alias."

Cable frowned. "I can promise you I haven't knowingly hired any blue-skinned shapeshifters lately. You'll understand if this information causes me some concern."

"Then I hope _you'll_ understand why some of our people will be coming by to help you out with your search," Bridge replied, and met Cable's glare without hesitation, with an intensity the viewscreen did little to mitigate.

"Your missing man," said Cable, slowly, "was he under your direct command?"

Bridge blinked back at him. "What the hell does that have to do with any of this?"

"I'll take that as a no. I assume I don't have to point out what this looks like, Bridge. There's a reason that film landed on your desk out of every office in SHIELD, and a reason they're trying to frame me for it. Someone's working our... history to play us against each other."

"My thoughts exactly," Bridge agreed. "And the sooner I can get my people in to have a good look around your... facility, the sooner we can get this all cleared up and over with."

"Of course. When should we expect you?"

"'Bout an hour. Roll out the welcome mat. Bridge out."

The screen went dark. Cable took one long, slow breath, to clear his mind, then opened it to broadcast to every other person in the building.

_"We have armed operatives preparing to break into this facility as we speak. I'm giving you all sixty seconds to grab anything you can't leave behind before we Bodyslide out. Be thorough, we will NOT be coming back. MOVE!"_

* * *

Copycat was sitting cross-legged on her bed in the Danger Room when Cable stormed through the door. She was halfway to her feet by the time he got to the bed; Cable's hand on her arm dragged her the rest of the way. "You broke into a SHIELD facility?!"

Copycat's eyes went wide. "I- "

" _Don't_. Don't you dare lie to me. Not now."

"I didn't _know_ it was a SHIELD facility!" Copycat wrenched her arm out of his grasp. "It looked like a regular office block, and I _walked_ in. Tolliver had detailed instructions about the files he wanted. He offered me what should have been enough money to set me up somewhere quiet for a while – it was supposed to be a one-off gig. If I'd had any idea he was going to hold it over my head like that to keep me under his thumb-"

"And if you _had_ known you were breaking into SHIELD?"

She pursed her lips and looked away. "...I would have charged him twice as much, and made sure I had insurance against this sort of crap. That enough truth for you?"

"It would have gone a lot further _before_ I found out I had a team of SHIELD agents hardly minutes from breaking into my base!" Cable roared, and watched her freeze, panic, and finally slump in resignation in barely more than the space of three seconds.

"If you're going to hand me over, I can leave you out of-" she began.

"You're not getting out of this _that_ easily. _Move_ ," he ordered, shoving her in the direction of the door. "I'll meet you in the common room; I'm sure you still remember where that is."

Copycat staggered a step, her feet moving on automatic while she stared at him over her shoulder in shock, before it finally sunk in that she was expected to _walk_ out of her prison. She reached the door at a run.

At his quarters, Cable stopped just long enough to retrieve his gun, a tool belt, and a small data disk. The rest... well, it was replaceable.

He reached the common room to find his team spooked but waiting for him, save Boomer, who was still dragging a large, badly-stuffed duffle bag in through the other door.

" _No_ ," he said firmly, before she could get beyond opening her mouth. "All complaints and questions will have to wait. Everyone accounted for?"

"Seven kids, two old-timers and one prisoner," reported Domino. "No Deadpool; no-one's seen him all day."

"I'll contact him later." Cable flicked open the comm on his wrist, "Professor, Bodyslide by ten."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun fact: Nathan Winters is an actual alias that Cable used in the actual comics back in his early days.
> 
> Ironically enough, he started using it long before he ever had the slightest clue he was a member of the Summers family (which came as a major surprise to everyone when it first came out). I'm sure the writers still thought it was funny.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Since I'm starting to introduce some of the lesser-known members of Six Pack, Cable's old mercenary team, I posted up [some detailed bios and comic scans of them](http://rallamajoop.livejournal.com/122162.html) for anyone who might be curious about their earlier appearances from the old 90's comics. There's a lot to their backstory with Cable that never got more than touched on in the pages of _Cable & Deadpool_, and even by 90's comic standards the full narrative actually made quite a satisfying tale.

The first thing Deadpool noticed upon teleporting back to his new team's home base was... well, technically it was the _lack_ of anything to notice, owing to how he was standing somewhere shrouded in complete darkness. Oh fuck a duck, had his teleport belt gone and materialised him inside a cupboard again? If Weasel's rotten tin-can zappifier had set him up to burst out of some half-dressed X-kid's closet to inevitably land in a completely accidental compromising position, that no-good mechanic would be finishing his next project through a _straw_.

But when stretching and flailing his arms around failed to put him in contact with any walls or shelves or even coat hangers, Deadpool had to conclude that perhaps he wasn't in a closet after all. Fishing through his pouches by feel, he located a small flashlight with working batteries and flicked it on.

Well damn, if he didn't know better, he'd say he was standing in the library. In pitch darkness. Guess at least now he knew how many X-Men it really took to change a light bulb.

By the light of his tiny flashlight, Deadpool navigated his way to the door. Much as expected, the light switch by the doorframe failed to offer any help in illuminating matters, no matter how many times he switched it up or down. None of this twigged as cause for great concern until he'd reached the hall outside to find it equally dark, and the light switch there equally unresponsive. He tried his teleport belt next, but none of the buttons produced anything more useful than a slightly strained hissing noise.

"Okay," said Deadpool. "Never seen a horror movie that started like this or nothing."

There was a short, unhelpful silence. Then a squad of six men in riot gear burst in through the ceiling.

"Oh, great timing!" said Deadpool happily, over the ensuing chaos. "I was almost starting to get worried back there. Say, anyone seen Cable? Big guy, glowing eye, metal arm, _really_ weird take on prisoner hospitality?"

"Who the... _Deadpool?!_ " yelled someone.

"Yes? That you boss?" Deadpool sidestepped a couple of inexpertly wielded batons and peered in what might have been the appropriate direction. Was that light glinting off metal he saw? "I spy with my little eye..."

"Try _something ending with 'Weapon X'!_ " The owner of the voice launched himself over several heads and tackled a blindsided Deadpool to the ground, where the latter found himself pinned under the grip of _two_ metal arms. And what felt like at least two metal legs.

Recognition got him on the rebound. " _Kane?_ " Deadpool squeaked. "Garrison Kane? Department K's own favourite guinea pig mascot amputee Kane? Oh my god, are they throwing all our class reunions as surprise parties now?"

" _You're_ working for Cable?" demanded Kane.

"You know _Cable?_ Wow, small industry! It's like Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, only-"

"The _only_ thing I want to hear from you, Wilson," yelled Kane, with a light hail of furious spittle, "is a really _short_ explanation why one of Tolliver's flunkies would be hanging out in Cable's lair!"

"Uh, _rude_. Jeez, a guy lets his facebook status go three days out of date and everyone takes it personally. See if _you_ stay friended under my next alias."

"Wrong answer." Kane's fingers dug into Deadpool's flesh. " _Where's Cable?_ "

" _Whoa_. So, uh, if I have a bit of an inappropriate reaction to metal hands in my personal space a few seconds from now, you know not to take it personally, right?" Deadpool tried not to squirm. "Say, were you asking me something just now? Wh..." He froze suddenly, staring over Kane's left shoulder. "Nate! There you are!"

Kane got about halfway through exclaiming, "You seriously expect me to fall for that?" before Cable kicked him in the head.

"I can't leave you alone for a second, can I?" said Cable, though not without a certain fondness, and offered Deadpool a hand up.

Deadpool snorted back at him. "Like you wouldn't reschedule your whole day around an opening for a good heroic entrance, Na-whoops, we're in work hours, right, _Boss_?"

" _Cable?_ " Kane rolled to his feet with a gun already trained on them. "Don't you even _think_ about moving."

Cable gave him a dispassionate look. "For what it's worth, Kane, I'd be only too happy to explain exactly what Deadpool's doing here, but since I'm in a hurry and I doubt you'd believe me anyway, I can only assure you that every assumption you just made is wrong. Bodyslide by two."

The first thing Deadpool said after noticing the abrupt change in his surroundings that followed, " _That didn't work when I tried it!_ "

"Personal teleporter trouble?" said Cable, already moving towards the nearest corridor. "That would be SHIELD's jamming net at work. You must have ported in just moments before they brought it online."

"Kane and them were from SHIELD? _I thought we were the good guys!_ " protested Deadpool, following along behind.

"Tolliver set us up through an old associate of mine with a grudge," said Cable, perhaps a trifle apologetic. "There was no time for diplomacy. We could have been in real trouble back there if their jamming tech was advanced enough to deal with a translocation system operating through a satellite relay."

"You have access to a _satellite relay?_ "

"Not exactly," said Cable and pointed Deadpool to the nearest window. "Welcome to Greymalkin."

Roughly ten seconds and only a few creative expletives later, Deadpool gave up on staring out the window in favour of glaring at his host. "Did the concept of 'subtle' murder your teddy bear or something?"

"Come on, you love it," said Cable, bumping him on the shoulder.

Deadpool grumbled and elbowed him in the ribs. "So how'd you know Kane, anyhow? You guys get your nails done at the same mechanic?"

"Domino and I were in a small mercenary team together with Kane some years ago."

"And?"

"And it's a long story."

"Aw, c'mon-"

" _And_ I have a team of teenagers in need of a full briefing on the situation _and_ a new permanent base," said Cable, nodding towards the hall ahead where the rest of the team was waiting.

"You have a _satellite_ and you need _another_ permanent base?"

"I was thinking maybe something more subtle for everyday use."

"Oh, _I see_ what you did there."

"Cable?" called a concerned-looking kid as Cable strode into the room. – Cannonball, from what Deadpool remembered from Tolliver's briefing packet and what everyone had been calling everyone else since he joined this outfit.

"Clean in-and-out, Sam. SHIELD beat me there, but they didn't have time to give us any trouble. Alright," said Cable, to the room at large. " _Now_ I'll take questions."

The room only exploded a little bit, which was probably something like a win.

* * *

Deadpool mostly tuned out as Cable gave his team the low down on why SHIELD was raiding their hideout, why SHIELD would be looking for Nessa in the first place, how everything was Tolliver's fault, why just handing Nessa over to SHIELD and working with them to sort the whole mess out like reasonable adults was _completely_ out of the question, why going _back_ to the mansion was likewise completely out of the question, and why they needed a new hideout down around sea level when they had a perfectly good satellite to hang out in. After fielding a long string of questions, he eventually got to picking three of the kids to take with him to scope out some new real estate, leaving everyone else – including Deadpool – to amuse themselves upstairs until he got back.

Deadpool took up amusing himself by experimenting with all the buttons on a nearby console until a polite computer voice informed him that a) it had been instructed to ignore any input that came from anyone but Cable, b) it found his impersonation of Cable thoroughly unconvincing, c) it could not be convinced to reveal any embarrassing personal details about its master whatsoever, and d) that its designation was not "Scotty" and it would not respond to requests to "beam me up". It also informed him there was no holodeck, and nor were there any nymphomaniac alien babes on board, green-skinned or otherwise.

He through about going to chat to Nessa for a bit, what with how the rest of the team were still giving her an awkwardly wide berth, but the glare she shot at him could've stopped a mule at twenty paces, so that idea was out. He was just trying to remember where 'gets raided by SHIELD agents' and 'owns a private satellite' rated on the official _21 signs you're dating a supervillain_ list when he spotted one of the younger members of Cable's team – the hot red-head with the accent – coming towards him with the look on her face of someone determined to start a conversation.

"It's Wade, right?" she said, frowning her way through her obvious uncertainty.

"Um. Yes?" A very pretty girl is talking to me, thought Wade. A very pretty girl who is probably very underage, while her single-father-figure who you are (discretely) screwing has shamelessly abandoned you to deal with this alone. Now would probably be a very bad time to say anything inappropriate.

"Theresa," said – well, Theresa, "Or Siryn, if we're doing code names, but my friends call me Terry."

That sounded awfully like a trap. "...so I should call you...?"

"Oh, whichever. Look, me and the others were talking, and we decided we didn't give you much of a chance before, but if it weren't for you Domino would still be a prisoner and we wouldn't have any idea we had a traitor on our team. You didn't have to do that for us, but you did, and we owe you. So I thought one of us ought to... I don't know, come over and extend the olive branch and say we were sorry for judging you so quickly before."

Deadpool's mouth dropped open. Several seconds passed before he regained enough jaw control to get out the word, " _What?!_ "

Terry treated him to a long, suspicious sort of look. "Which part are you having trouble with?"

"The _'sorry Deadpool, we misjudged you'_ part! My name does not happen in that script!"

"You don't get a lot of that, huh?"

"Oh, the _judging_ I get! I get judged more often than reality TV about diehard fans of Nicolas Cage! I look out my window in the morning and there will be three guys on the sidewalk holding numbers over their heads! It's the 'sorry' part I'm thinking I misheard somehow!"

"Well, you didn't," said Terry. "Should I maybe leave you to come to terms with that for a bit and come back later?"

"Swell, let's do that," said Deadpool, and stuck his head between his knees. When he looked up again after giving himself a stern mental pep talk and doing maybe just a little girly freaking out, Terry had wandered off.

Deadpool leapt for the nearest console and scaled it like a monkey.

Fifteen seconds later he swung back into Terry's view from an overhead walkway, upside down and hanging out all casual and everything. "So as I was saying, before we got rudely interrupted back there and you wandered away..."

"Before you had your little freak-out, you mean?" supplied Terry.

"... _as I was saying_... uh, remind me where we were when I was saying it?"

"I was telling you how the team took a vote and decided we don't want you off the island after all?"

"Yeah. So that's swell, no hard feelings, and hey, I guess I'm sorry for punching your face in that one time?"

"That was Tabitha, not me," said Terry, amused. "But I can pass it on if you like."

"Sure, but you know – like I was saying, don't get your spandex in a bunch over it or nothing. I'm used to folks being judgey, but then I kill people for a living, so who'm I to complain? 'Sides, even I thought Cable was taking the mickey when he first said he said he wanted to hire me, so we all got that to share."

Terry gave him a thin-lipped smile. "Well, truth is I've not been here much longer'n you have, but from what I've seen, that's Cable in a nutshell. Sam and the others say they met him on the street one day on the run from some MLF goons. No hellos, no by-your-leave, he just started giving orders. After the last guy in charge, they weren't going to complain. Xavier left them with _Magneto_ before he showed up, can you believe that?"

Deadpool waved that away. "Ehhh, I've heard worse, but people get funny when I bring up publishing stunts from the other side of that-wall-we-don't-talk-about."

Terry arched an eyebrow at him. "My point was, Cable has this history of pulling stuff that makes no sense to anyone until after the fact. Right before you showed up here, there was this whole other mess with these guys called the Externals and Sam and Roberto, and _ugh_ , you'd swear he knew it was Sam they were really after before even _they_ did, don't ask me how, and don't even get me started on that whole thing with his evil twin. His idea of a 'need to know basis' makes the CIA look like the marketing division of a public awareness campaign. Drives you half-mad, or it would except somehow he comes through for us when it counts."

"Not to cut you off, babe, but you have no _idea_ how hard you are preaching to the choir on this one," said Deadpool, fervently.

"Oh, I bet, but I'm also betting you know more than what he's told us," said Terry, watching him from the corner of her eye. "We know what he's like; we should've known when he hired you there was more to it than it seemed."

Somewhere under the mask, Deadpool's eyes took on the approximate diameter of two saucers. "Um."

Terry pressed on regardless. "So basically, the rest of us were wondering how you knew Cable."

"Just for the record, roughly how incriminating would it be if I asked you to clarify exactly what sense you're using the word 'know' in here?" asked Deadpool, twitching slightly.

"I _mean_ , we were wondering how you met," said Terry. Deadpool stared at her blankly.

"Um, I broke in, tried to kill him? Pretty sure you were there?" 

Terry frowned at him. "You sure you'd never met him before that?"

"Pretty sure?"

"How sure is that?" asked Terry, shifting awkwardly. "Because we were all thinking him hiring you out of the blue like that would make a lot more sense if you'd met before somewhere. You're a merc, he used to be a merc, it _seemed_ to add up. Maybe he was using a different alias back then, or it was before all his hair went white, or... Wade?"

Deadpool, no longer content with merely fitting crockery in his eye-sockets, had frozen to the spot like someone's tongue on an iceberg. "Excuse me. Just remembered an urgent appointment to go powder a man about a horse," he squeaked, and scampered away.

* * *

"It's clear," Wolfsbane announced, shifting back to human even as she stepped back into the main room of the mountain hideout. "No human scents here less than months old. Not even any new oil leaks." She wrinkled up her nose. "Except in here, of course."

"Hard to imagine they'd have left a nearly-full fuel tank for us to find if the former tenants had ever been back here to clean up," said Cable, wiping grease off his hands and extinguishing the last torch. With the old generator up and running again and most of the lights still working they'd be able to move in almost right away.

"Is it wise, taking the base of an enemy?" Shatterstar wondered aloud. "We can but guess what surprises they've left behind for us, and they know of its location. If they trace us to nearby..."

"It's a risk, but we take that risk anywhere we go, Star," said Cable. "I have tech back on Greymalkin we can use to scan this place for us for any unpleasant surprises. Meanwhile, neither Tolliver or SHIELD know this place exists and the Sentinel program is long gone from here. If they ever come back, _we'll_ bethe unpleasant surprise waiting for them. This facility is as secure as any we could ask for."

Footsteps in the hallway announced Sam's return from the main console room. "Computer systems have all seen better days, but some of it might be salvageable, not that I'm the best one to tell," he reported.

"Don't bother, we'll scrap whatever's left and replace it," said Cable. "Less chance of alerting anyone left on the Sentinel program that this place has guests."

Sam looked a little unconvinced. "It's a bit further from civilisation than most of the team will be used to."

"Bodyslides are still an option, Sam, but this way the Professor won't have to transport us all the way from orbit for every mission. Be glad we're still in New York state."

"Don't look at me, I was born down in Kentucky," said Sam, shrugging his shoulders. "Apart from that, well, the place needs some sprucing up, but it's something to work with." Outwardly, he sounded a little stiff, but Cable could hear something buzzing angrily just below the surface of his mind.

"Is there something else, Sam?"

Sam shifted once, surprised, then hardened his stance. "Well, truth be told, Cable, not everyone's so ready to move their while lives on a dime as you are. I don't know if it's going to be so easy for some of us to leave the mansion behind like that, and I might just be one of them. After everything we've been through there with Professor Xavier and the X-Men, good and bad – even when we only had the basement left to live in, it was something."

"I know, Sam. If it helps, don't think of this as a new home, think of it as a stop along the way." Cable rested a hand on his shoulder briefly, then stepped into the clear. "I'll bring the others down."

He had a lot on his mind as he requested a Bodyslide back to Greymalkin, and seeing as he was entering friendly territory, was less alert than he might have been. Under the circumstances, it would be hard to decide what exactly would have been the _very_ last thing he might have been expecting, but finding himself suddenly tackled by a wet, naked man yelling "EUREKA!" at the top of his lungs had to come pretty close.

Slightly over three seconds later, after a brief tussle ending with his assailant pinned to the ground with a gun to the head, Cable was actually much less surprised to make out who it was. "Wade?"

"Ooh, nice _reflexes!_ " Wade crowed, seeming characteristically pleased to find himself pinned under Cable's imposing bulk.

If it had been anyone else, Cable would have damn well kept him pinned there until he'd explained himself, but Wade would only make a point of getting the wrong idea. Cable returned his gun to his holster and got stiffly to his feet. "Wade, this is really not the time."

"Au contraire, this is the _only_ time!"

Cable gave him a look. "If satellites or teleportation particularly turn you on, feel free to let me know sometime-"

"Oh you and your Freudian slips. How dirty does your mind have to be to find something sexual about this situation?"

That look Cable had been giving him continued.

"Actually, don't answer that, 'cause I'm talking, and have I got an epiphany to share with _you_ , Mr Oh-so-coy. _You knew I was coming!_ How didn't I see it before, it explains everything!"

Cable waited a moment to see if this statement would start making sense of its own accord. It didn't. "Possibly I'm going to need you to explain this from the top for me."

"You know that moment, right, where you're not even working the case no more," said Deadpool, still seated on the floor but gesticulating enthusiastically, "maybe you're sitting there down the park feeding the ducks, maybe you're chatting to the waitress about what the zodiac says 'bout her relationship problems, and suddenly _bam_! It clicks, _that's why the pyramids weren't in a line_! The game is _on_! And before you know it, you're out of that bathtub and galumphing down the street in your birthday suit hollering _it was lupus all along!_ "

"Mixed metaphors are a way of life for you, aren't they?"

"Excuse me, did it smell like I was done in there? As I was saying, _you knew I was coming!_ That day Tolliver sent me to cook your noodle, someone tipped you off! I mean, no offence, Boss, but we both know you're not _really_ crazy enough to seduce some passing brawn-for-hire you don't know from any other goon, but if someone _told_ you 'Pool was on his way... maybe even let you in on what an animal I am in the sack – that's it, it was one of my exes, wasn't it? I mean, couldn't have been Vanessa, and it's not like me and Kane ever made the beast-who-must-not-be-named, don't you even try distracting me with that one... but it wouldn't be totally unlike the old boss to call you up and _gloat_ about me being on my way..."

Cable sighed. Sometimes, there was much to be said for the path of least resistance. "Will it make you happy if I tell you you're right?"

"Yes!" Deadpool leapt to his feet and punched the air. "I knew it! So c'mon, spill, who was it?"

"Now you're asking me to reveal my sources."

Deadpool went strangely still. "No, seriously, Nate, who was it? You don't get to keep me hanging on this one, that's not how the script goes. This _will_ keep me up at night, you feel me?"

"I'm sorry, Wade. I'm not about to sacrifice anyone's confidence for your curiosity."

"Curiosity, _schmuriosity_ ; if there's someone out there who's hacked my desk calendar _and_ has been giving me good references, then I want to know. I am willing to pull I'm-sleeping-with-youprivileges on this one! I am willing to pull _your_ sleeping-with- _me_ privileges out from under you if that's what it takes!"

Cable stared at him. "Let me get this straight. You're threatening to refuse your own employment perks because you think I misled you over how you originally came to my attention?"

"Oh. Oh, _perks_ , that's how he's going to play it, huh? Like withholding the goods only hurts _one_ of us, huh?" Deadpool stabbed him in the chest with a finger. "I think someone might be underestimating how dirty The Pool is prepared to play!"

"Dirty, hm?" said Cable, pushing past, "I look forward to finding out." The look of blank frustration on Wade's unmasked face as he turned around went largely ignored.

"Not kidding, Nate, red flag. This is _not_ one you get to keep below the belt."

"Let me know how this new streak of paranoia works out for you," said Cable over his shoulder as he made for the hall where the others were waiting.

So Wade was asking questions – it would keep. If he hadn't put it aside or forgotten about it by this time tomorrow, Cable had every faith the Tolliver situation would find ways to provide ample distraction enough.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fair warning on the GI front - it’s likely to be a while before chapter 10 materialises. This chapter marks the end of the material I had planned out in advance, and while I know where the story is headed in the long run there’s still a lot of niggly logistic plot stuff that needs sorting out before I can get it there, and that’s going to set my rate of progress back a good deal (plus I’d be lying if I pretended I wasn’t a little distracted by that ridiculous _Teen Wolf_ epic I’ve been posting lately.) I'll try to get some progress updates up over [on my tumblr](http://rallamajoop.tumblr.com) when I'm actually getting close.


End file.
